Here I have to mention slave ants, a special type of ant.
Slave-accumulating ants are known as ant slave masters. They are a kind of ant that likes to plunder and is lazy to do anything. Its survival is entirely based on robbing ordinary ants for their slavery.
They do not engage in any production activities. Their only job is to plunder ants and young ants from other ant nests and return them as slaves, or to snatch ant eggs and ant pupae back to the nest and hatch ants to serve as slaves.
Slaves have to dig tunnels and transport food for slave ants, and some work as "nannies" in the nursery, raising slave ant larvae or hatching plundered common ant pupae, and undertake all the work that should be the responsibility of worker ants.
These ant slaves work humiliatingly until they die. As a result, the slave ants live a life of having real food to open their mouths. They don't even know how to eat, so they can only rely on slaves to feed food into their mouths.
The only advantage of the slave ants is that they have strong combat capabilities. They are a natural fighting race and have even evolved fighting and plundering into an art.
The body structure of slave ants has also evolved to adapt to fighting and plundering. Their tiniest joints form curved spines at the tips, their carapace is twice as thick as brown ants, and their narrow heads are perfectly triangular, leaving no room for enemies to attack their heads. The most eye-catching thing is the pair of large jaws on their mouths, which are like two full-moon scimitars, capable of both damage and flexibility. Their whole body is a professional fighting machine.
Since they have been specialized in fighting for a long time, slave ants have evolved to the point where they do not know how to build nests, raise children, or even feed themselves. Although its machete-like mouth is invincible on the battlefield, it cannot eat normally.
Generally speaking, each slave ant slave owner needs three slaves to serve him, one to feed him; one to groom him (the slave ant's own salivary glands have long atrophied); and one to clean up the excrement (otherwise it will accumulate Too much will corrode the carapace).
The saddest fate for these fierce warriors was to be abandoned by their slaves. At this time, they must immediately find a new target ant nest. If they still fail to find a target in a short period of time, these brave slave ants will even freeze to death or starve to death.
Slave ants often select small or medium-sized black ant, termite or yellow ant nests as prey targets.
Their methods of plundering are also very diverse.
Before slave ants rob ants, they will send scouts out to conduct reconnaissance to see where they can rob slaves. They never fight unprepared.
When the scouts find the black ants they want to rob, they rush back to the nest to report to the queen. If the scale of the slave ants is still small, the queen will personally lead a large group of subordinates to kill the target ant nest.
When the guardians of the target ant nest discover that an enemy is invading, they will defend their home to the death. When the two sides are fighting fiercely, it is difficult to distinguish. Slave ant queens will be deliberately surrounded and then suddenly pretend to fall dead.
When the target ants drag the slave ant queen who faked her death into the ant nest and offer it to their own queen as a major trophy, they have fallen into the trap of the slave ant queen.
When the soldier ants recede and only the slave ant queen and the target queen are left in the ant nest, the former will immediately get up and pounce on and kill the target queen like a hungry tiger preying on prey.
The slave ant queen will then bite the target queen's body and lick her wounds continuously to absorb her chemical pheromones into herself.
In this way, the slave ant queen has the chemical information of the target queen, and then pretends to be the target queen and gives orders. As a result, the fighting stopped immediately. As if they had been brainwashed, the black ant workers regarded their original enemies as one of their own, and they all moved closer to the slave ant queen and began to serve her.
In addition to this strategy of outsmarting more with less, slave ants also often storm target nests to plunder slaves.
When the scouts discover the target, the reinforcements of slave ants will arrive and surround the target stronghold. At this time, the frightened worker ants in the target nest will try to dig other escape exits to deliver the eggs to a safe place. The slave ants block every exit, forcing the worker ants to drop the eggs and pupae they carry.
Slave ants only kill ants that disobey. When the war is over and the slave ants occupy the target nest, they force the surviving worker ants to move the eggs to their territory to continue taking care of them. The hatched ants may become loyal endeavors.
During each robbery, slaves who have served longer will cooperate with the slave ants. The slaves hide under the weeds at a distance, waiting for the slave masters to clear the area. When the slave ants return triumphantly, these slaves enter the place and transform into smart housewives, mixing the newly snatched ant eggs with the old ones, and educating the prisoners of war and their children.
Slave ants also have a quick plunder tactic.
They sent a few slave ants to scout. When they found other ant nests, they rushed in and killed the guarding soldier ants. Then they secreted a pheromone from their abdomens, and a large group of slave ants swarmed in. They didn't ask for anything. Occupy the target ant nest, but specifically rob the ant pupae, grab one in your mouth and run back.
Interestingly, although slave ants are invincible in battle, the slaves they plunder sometimes rebel.
It is often plundered adult ants that initiate rebellions, and newly hatched slave ants rarely rebel. Slave rebels will decapitate slave ant slave owners and throw their eggs out of their nests, leaving them to die without care.
Theoretically, only one rebellious slave ant is enough to lead the slaves to an uprising, and it is not difficult to kill the young slave ants. However, the outcome of this kind of uprising still seems to be on the side of the slave owners. At least 30% of the slave-owning ants can always survive this Spartacus-style uprising and then continue to plunder everywhere.
This slave uprising scene is always reminiscent of the Spartacus uprising. The ant world is so similar to the human world.
Generally speaking, the social system of slave-owning ants is close to slavery, with a class of slave owners who do not engage in production and a specialized class of slaves transformed from prisoners of war.
Although big-headed ants also occasionally capture captives, they have not become normalized and do not regard slave production as the most basic economic activity.
According to the protagonist's understanding, the Big-headed Ant Kingdom is still in the civilized stage of transition from primitive communes to slavery, and if there are slave-keeping ants in this world, then they are naturally more suitable to enter a slave society.
From a Marxist point of view, slave society is obviously more advanced than primitive society. Its productivity and labor productivity have been greatly improved, and social products have begun to have surplus in addition to the necessities to maintain life.
The emergence of surplus products will lead to the emergence of a class that is not involved in production, such as slave ants that are only responsible for war, or the male ants in the big-headed ant kingdom that are actually out of business.
This social division of labor will prepare the conditions for the emergence of private ownership, but private ownership has obviously not yet appeared in the big-headed ant's society.
"Private ownership", the protagonist silently chants this magical word.
