Although the protagonist feels that the agricultural revolution is necessary, everything currently depends on the cultivation results of this small experimental field.
On such a small experimental field, there is no need for a hundred worker ants to cook food. The reason why the protagonist placed so many agricultural worker ants is not only to pay attention to it, but also to prepare for expanding the scale of planting in the future.
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Every day, the attack of the parasitic ant army will be launched at noon or afternoon. However, with the fortress in place, attacks of less than a thousand ants no longer pose any threat.
Only a few soldiers of the Divine Envoy King's Legion will die or be injured in the defensive battle, and after rotation, almost all the soldier ants have experience in fighting this kind of enemy.
The third batch of one hundred male ants have hatched from the eggs and are still in the state of young ants before pupating. When these male ants reach adulthood, it will be time for the God Envoy King's army to launch a full-scale counterattack.
"Dongyang City" now has a more and more comprehensive understanding of parasitic ants.
Part of this understanding comes from the fact that the parasitic worker ant was captured, although the captive was already dead, succumbed to the growing thread-parasitic fungus on her body.
But the protagonist has learned a lot about the mysterious parasitic ant nest from the captives, including some details that he ignored at first.
For example, although almost all ants in this parasitic ant nest are parasitized, the parasitic bacteria can interfere with the behavior of ordinary ants through hormones.
But the protagonist gradually feels that the actual controllers of the parasitic ant nest are still ants. Or in other words, the thread-parasitic fungus cannot completely control the ant nest.
Rather than saying that the thread-parasitic bacteria parasitizes the ants and controls the host, it is better to say that the ants and the thread-parasitic bacteria form a symbiotic relationship.
Thread-parasitic fungi give ants more power, making it easier for them to hunt insects and obtain food resources.
The ants pay the price of a reduced average lifespan, using extra nutrients to supply thread-parasitic bacteria and help them reproduce.
The reason why I feel this way is because when the protagonist is watching the memories of the captives and fighting the parasitic ants, he can clearly feel that the behavior of these parasitic ants is basically developing in a direction that is in line with the interests of the ant nest, and spreading threads Parasitic bacteria are just incidental behavior.
For example, parasitic ants herd scale insects to obtain honeydew.
For ants, the pleasure brought by eating honeydew is unmatched by any other food, so the ants are happy to spend extra time and energy grazing scale insects.
For thread-parasitic fungi, no matter what food the ants eat, the nutrients they absorb are the same. If they are the dominant behavior, then they are naturally willing to control the ants to eat more efficiently, instead of waiting for the scale insects to secrete the little honeydew from time to time.
At least when it comes to grazing scale insects, ants have stronger control than thread parasites.
As for the constant dispatch of small groups of troops to harass "Dongyang City" every day, it can be explained either as the will of the ants - to continuously weaken the threat capability of "Dongyang City", or as the will of the thread parasitic bacteria - to infect more people. Healthy ants.
Generally speaking, the protagonist feels that a symbiotic relationship has been formed between these parasitized ants and the thread-parasitic fungus.
As for the ants in "Dongyang City" that were infected in previous battles, some were able to recover after treatment with Huoliao, but about half of them could not prevent the growth of the thread-parasitic bacteria even after treatment.
These ants that were ineffective in treatment would eventually die, but before they died, by imprisoning them for observation, we also learned a lot about the behavior of the parasitized ants.
There are still some mysteries about parasitic ants that have not yet been solved, such as the origin of the thread-parasitic fungus. Are the mysterious sub-nests that disappeared in the history of the big-headed ant kingdom also due to the thread-parasitic fungus? Who is the actual controller of the parasitic ant nest, that is, the mastermind behind it?
However, the protagonist believes that all this will come to light after the parasitic ant nest is eliminated.
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Over the past few days, the pottery knife experiment that Xiao Mi was responsible for made progress. After countless experiments, Xiao Mi and the worker ants finally figured out a suitable glaze formula.
The glazed pottery knife fired using this formula has a tight combination of glaze layer and pottery body. The pottery knife is sharp and strong, and has partially reached the technical specifications of metal knives.
In the real world, ceramic knives are mostly made of nanomaterials. Zirconia and alumina powder need to be pressed into a knife blank using a 300-ton heavy pressure and a mold, sintered at a high temperature of 2000 degrees Celsius, and then polished with diamonds before it can be formed.
This kind of ceramic blade uses high-tech nanotechnology and is more than ten times sharper than a steel knife. It has the characteristics of high hardness, high density, high temperature resistance, anti-magnetization, and anti-oxidation.
Of course, the protagonist does not master advanced nanotechnology, nor can he meet the technical conditions of high temperature and high pressure. The secret to being able to make knives that are as strong as metal lies in the size of the knives.
Everyone knows how sharp glazed pottery is. The sharp edges of a broken ceramic bowl can cut your fingers accidentally.
Although ordinary ceramics are as brittle as glass, after being broken into small pieces, the smaller the ceramic flakes, the higher the mechanical strength they have, making it difficult to crush them again.
The pottery knives fired by the ants are just like this. They are very small, so they meet the requirements for the sturdiness of the knives.
The disadvantage is that the knife cannot be made very large. If you need a large knife, you can only use a piece of wood to cut out the back of the knife, and then use grooves and ant glue to inlay pieces of pottery knife to form a combined knife.
This combination knife is similar to the "Maquawit". "Maquahuit", also known as the obsidian saw sword, is a special weapon of the Aztec Jaguar warriors in Central America.
Due to the backward iron-smelting technology of the Aztec civilization, without metal weapons, they invented this weapon that was made of sharpened obsidian chips inlaid on wooden sticks.
Although the "Maquawit" looks very primitive and crude, its blade is extremely sharp and its lethality in combat is quite amazing, especially when dealing with people without armor.
The Spaniards had experimented with cutting off a horse's head with a single blow using a "maquahuit", an obsidian blade sharp enough to be used for shaving. In areas where metal products are not available, it is a deadly weapon.
The protagonist popularizes the large and small pottery knives produced in the combustion chamber and they are widely used in places in "Dongyang City" where materials and food need to be cut.
The protagonist even suddenly had the idea to design a set of weapons used by the ants, similar to the "Maquawit" weapons inlaid with sharp pottery fragments.
However, after making samples and undergoing experiments, the protagonist gave up temporarily. The limbs of ants are weak and the forelimbs are not flexible enough. It is difficult to break through the defense of the ants' carapace by wielding such a weapon.
The ant's natural weapon - the bite force of the pliers is sufficient, but the protagonist has not figured out how to securely attach the pottery knife to the pliers and make it easy to put on and take off.
