The protagonist rides Xiaoqing, about three meters away from the cluster of paving ants, watching everything that happens in this wedding flight ceremony.
This distance is very safe. The vision of most insects is not enough to notice a small dot three meters away, including pavement ants who are competing fiercely in the field and avoiding predators.
The pavement ants on the ground cannot clearly see the protagonist in the sky. Even if they see a blurry shadow, they will probably mistake it for a predatory insect.
The biggest threat is the dragonflies and wasps that are busy hunting, but they obviously have a clearer target, which is the pavement ants participating in the wedding flight ceremony.
These male and female pavement ants are all young ants born this year that have just emerged from pupae. Their bodies are rich in various nutrients, which are stored in the form of eggs or eggs in their enlarged abdomens.
For predators, the male and female ants are at their fattest at this time, and this temptation is as irresistible to humans as when facing a hairy crab full of cream and yellow.
With so many plump prey gathered together, all the hungry beasts in this barren spring are unable to resist this temptation, and the protagonist who is far away obviously does not have this temptation.
Only some well-fed beasts passed by the protagonist at a relatively close distance when leaving, but at this time they obviously did not intend to attack the protagonist, but were preparing to go back and digest today's food.
This wedding flight ceremony is simply a bloody death ceremony for pavement ants and a gluttonous feast for predators.
There were a lot of pavement ants still chasing and competing in the sky, but there were also a lot of predators, and some even came all the way from the south bank of the river to participate in the gluttonous feast. Especially wasps, after discovering prey, they often call their friends and the entire nest to come and start a massacre.
Even in the face of the maws of countless predators, the male pavement ants did not flinch. While avoiding predators, they chased female ants, and in the process they constantly had to fight fiercely with competing male ants. Fight.
At this moment, both the male and female pavement ants flying in the air lost the protection of the colony. They were no longer the top members of the food chain that all insects smelled, but became pitiful prey. At the same time, Killing each other like crazy people.
The protagonist looked at it and shook his head, thinking that the casualty rate of the marriage flight ceremony of the pavement ants was far greater than that of the big-headed ants.
This is because the big-headed ants' ceremony involves the whole country gathering together, and the number of participants is only a few hundred. In addition, the ground security force is relatively strong, and the fierce insects on the ground within a certain range will be expelled in advance, so the casualty rate of the ceremony is roughly 50%. about. This is shocking enough for the protagonist.
As for the wedding flight ceremony of pavement ants, the number of male and female ants gathered at this ceremony alone exceeded the number of participants in the national ceremony of the big-headed ant kingdom. So many "delicious foods" naturally attract a large number of nearby predators. In addition, the ground security work of pavement ants is not very good. They only established a safe zone to shelter the male and female ants who have successfully mated or abandoned the ritual. The male and female ants who are performing the ritual can only fend for themselves. .
In this case, the casualty rate of the pavement ants participating in the ceremony will eventually be as high as 80%. At least as far as the protagonist can see, countless male and female ants will be reduced to pieces in the mouths of various predators.
Dragonflies flap their two pairs of membranous wings and rely on their superb flight skills to hunt.
They like to chase a prey in the air, but the pavement ants only fly for the first time when participating in the ceremony. No matter in terms of flight speed, technology or experience, they are no match for the dragonfly, an aerial overlord.
Once a dragonfly determines its prey, it will keep the prey within its sight at all times, constantly adjust its flight path, and can predict the prey's movements before taking action. Targeted pavement ants have difficulty escaping and are often caught by dragonflies from behind.
During the final stages of the pursuit, the dragonfly's legs bend to form a basket structure into which the pavement ants can fall while still in flight. Then, the dragonfly that has captured the prey will find a higher stopping point nearby and slowly enjoy the meal. Some impatient dragonflies will even hover in the air to eat, or eat while flying to save time for the next hunt.
Ladybugs have a rougher way of hunting. Although they are round in shape, they are extremely flexible in the air. The ladybug will use its larger size to drag the captured pavement ants to the ground, kill them quickly, pick up the prey and fly away again before the pavement ant guards arrive.
Wasps are ferocious-looking, numerous, and move in swarms. They are the predators that cause the heaviest casualties to pavement ants.
These wasps are about 16 mm long, with orange antennae, wings and tarsus, but a shiny black body with yellow stripes and paired spots. Their well-developed chewing mouthparts and venomous stingers are excellent hunting tools, but also intimidating.
There may be as many as a thousand wasps in a nest, and there were hundreds of wasps at the scene of this death ceremony. Normally, these wasps mainly prey on bees, but in today's rare feast, male and female pavement ants are also good prey.
These wasps act collectively, dividing and surrounding the scattered pavement ants, and then focus on attacking some of them. This group of unfortunate pavement ants are basically doomed when faced with wasps that are far superior in size, strength and flying skills to themselves.
These ferocious wasps even dare to land on the ground to hunt prey that is fleeing to the defense position of the pavement ant army. Only when the pavement ant army counterattacked, it easily fluttered its wings and slipped away.
Wasps are not only efficient at killing, but what's even more frightening is that they are also picky eaters. After capturing the prey, the wasps only eat or take away the abdomen of the fattest pavement ant, and the other heads, six limbs, and wings will be discarded. If every wasp that captured its prey didn't have to carry it all the way back to its nest, these hundreds of male and female pavement ants would have been slaughtered within a few hours.
The wedding flight ceremony, or death ceremony, lasted for half an hour, and only about 20% of the male or female ants survived. Some of them have successfully completed mating, while others have given up on this life-and-death game.
Interestingly, the protagonist noticed that the male ants hid in safe areas on the ground after completing the ceremony. Only half of the female ants that successfully mated returned to the safe zone, while the other half fled in all directions.
Fortunately, a female ant that was being chased by a wasp actually fled in the direction of the protagonist...
