This bottleneck is not just purely technical, but manifests itself in many aspects, some of which cannot even be broken through.
The first is the motivation for innovation.
The current technological innovation in "Dongyang City" depends entirely on the personal promotion of the protagonist.
Other ants have lived like this step by step for countless generations. It can be said that except for a few advancements such as the ability to use fire and the formation of war, the social structure and lifestyle of ants today are nothing compared to their ancestors millions of years ago. Variety.
Moreover, the big-headed ants, including the male ants with higher IQs, do not think there is anything bad about their current life. Although the protagonist's innovation has brought a lot of progress to "Dongyang City", at least all the ants have more meat. But most ants still take things as they come. Their current life is very good, and they can continue to live their original life. Can they continue to improve their lives? That's not necessary!
The protagonist can only think of one word to describe the mentality of these ants - muddle along.
Therefore, in the entire "Dongyang City", except for the protagonist, no ant wants to actively seek technological advancement and improvement of life.
Whenever he thinks about this, the protagonist feels like a loner.
The protagonist will also unconsciously think about the big-headed ant who was the first to use fire, and what kind of mentality he had to support him in bringing the fire back to the main nest, and then let other ants accept the existence of fire.
The protagonist has also thought about using other methods to replace independent innovation.
For example, the protagonist orders the secretary to lead a group of worker ants to improve the production of pottery. This is a thorough method of promoting innovation through administrative orders.
The ants are able to fulfill the protagonist's orders meticulously. However, work such as technological research and development cannot be completed by hard work, but requires groundbreaking thinking.
The ants lack this kind of groundbreaking thinking, so the protagonist has to formulate the experimental plan himself. For example, he asked the secretaries and others to constantly adjust the composition of the clay, add talc and other minerals to it, adjust the proportions, adjust the furnace temperature, etc., and then experiment with the final product.
This kind of experiment is not so much innovation as it is just a step-by-step operation according to the protagonist's arrangements. But that's it, it's the biggest achievement that the protagonist can achieve by letting the ants innovate on their own.
The only thing that comforts the protagonist is that Xiao Mi shows a certain degree of openness. She can find out the rules according to the experimental arrangements made by the protagonist, and make corresponding simple suggestions. This is a manifestation of logical thinking ability.
The second bottleneck is intellectual.
Among big-headed ants, the vast majority of ants have very low intelligence, far lower than the intelligence of humans in primitive societies.
As for the groundbreaking thinking mentioned above, neither soldier ants nor worker ants have this ability (the only exception is Xiaomi, the worker ants of parasitic ants also have relatively high intellectual performance).
The intelligence of soldier ants and worker ants is enough to support them in completing the tasks that the ant nest requires them to complete, such as collecting food, repairing the nest, and fighting external battles. They can also carry out the orders of the male ants.
But if they were expected to take any initiative, it was impossible. For example, the protagonist can order them to hunt a prey, and both the soldier ants and worker ants can complete it diligently. But if they are asked to do something they have never done before, such as catching prey alive and raising it, then they will definitely not be able to complete it unless the order is broken down into many steps and each step is ensured to be understood by the soldier ants and worker ants.
Not all ants in the ant nest are so intelligent. Male ants like Gun, Rambo Fei, and Gong An are no less intelligent than primitive humans. Male ants have all the abilities that intelligent creatures must possess: perception, memory, understanding, association, emotion, logic, discrimination, calculation, analysis, judgment, decision, etc.
The female ant or queen ant, according to the protagonist's feelings and judgment, has an IQ similar to that of the male ant.
With the IQ of male and female ants, if properly guided, the protagonist believes that they can complete complex scientific research, innovation and other tasks just like human individuals.
But this is also an idealized result. In fact, because male ants have always had a higher status in the ant world, they care about this status and honor very much.
Therefore, male ants are keen on being the ruling class. They like to participate in wars as commanders, but if they want them to improve handicrafts or agricultural skills, they will feel that this is doing the work of soldier ants or worker ants, which is an insult and would rather Refuse to die. Like before, the protagonist wanted Flying Eagle to be a messenger, but he sternly refused.
This road of male ants is not feasible. The protagonist also thinks about how to improve the IQ of ordinary worker ants and soldier ants. After all, there is a precedent like Xiao Mi.
However, this involves the differences between male ants, female ants, soldier ants, and worker ants. The protagonist still does not know what factors lead to the differences in status, size, strength, and IQ between the four.
But obviously, at least the difference in IQ between the four can be made up, and Xiao Mi is a good example. The parasitic ants can also cultivate intelligent pale gold worker ants and large worker ants, and even tame parasitic dung beetles, which are no more stupid than male ants. The protagonist now wants to explore the secrets inside.
The third bottleneck is difficult to overcome, which is the disadvantage of the ants' own size.
Humans' body shape is very suitable for evolving into intelligent creatures. They have moderate height and weight.
If an intelligent creature is too big, it will consume too much food and energy. This will bring about several serious problems: first, we must spend more time foraging, and lack free time to think and create; second, the community size must be small, and it is difficult to develop division of labor, and it will not be possible to accelerate social development. development of.
Even if the body is too small, even if the body is very intelligent, it cannot use its intelligence to create a very good competitive advantage for itself in the food chain. For example, no matter how powerful the ants are, they cannot withstand the stampede of an elephant.
The protagonist believes that the reason why ants can develop civilization in this world is related to the fact that there are no more advanced and larger creatures than insects in this world. Until now, the protagonist has never seen mammals, birds, etc. He believes that insects are the most advanced life form in the world.
Without the threat of large animals, ants can become the most intelligent and advantageous species at such a small size.
But being too small has many disadvantages for the development of civilization.
For example, when using an epoch-making resource like fire, ants have to spend a lot of time and energy to maintain the fuel for the flame. A person can easily collect a large bundle of firewood, but ants have to use a lot of labor and resources to do the same thing.
And projects that change the natural terrain to a certain extent, such as opening roads, are almost impossible tasks for ants.
This bottleneck is more terrifying than the first two, because the protagonist can't think of any way to overcome this difficulty.
