In addition to leaving behind short-acting pheromones as a reference for the return journey, the hunting team mainly relies on long-acting pheromones along the way.
These long-lasting pheromones are left by the ants traveling between "Dongyang City" and "Southern City", marking a "highway" belonging to ants.
Along this ant track, the hunting team does not need to climb over obstacles constructed by various terrains and vegetation, but can travel quickly on a winding but relatively flat road.
Although there is a grassland at the southern destination, and there are a lot of prey in the grassland, the vegetation in the grassland is too dense, which will make it difficult for the ants to move collectively. They will be separated by layers of plants, making it difficult to respond to each other. Prey, or even danger, may be lurking less than a decimeter away. With their vision blocked by vegetation and their hearing affected by the sound of wind blowing grass and leaves, the ants may not be aware that danger is approaching.
Therefore, the hunting team is unwilling to risk going deep into the grassland without being absolutely sure.
The destination of their trip was the bitter salt-alkali land.
Although the ants in "Dongyangcheng" do not rely on the bitter coarse salt of this saline-alkali land, but enjoy the higher purity and no bitter coarse salt from "Yancheng" and "Xinyancheng", so that the protagonist is thinking about how to master it. When working in salt mines, this resource that is so close at hand was ignored.
But for the insects living nearby, this salt-alkali land is a geomantic treasure.
The salt-alkali land and "Dongyangcheng" are both located to the north of the southern hills. This small basin in the northern hemisphere, like other hilly and mountainous areas, has more sunlight and precipitation at the southern foot of the mountain than in the north, and the vegetation is denser.
But less rain also has its benefits. Many insects cannot tolerate more precipitation, and they prefer to live and lay eggs on the northern slopes of the hills. Even many insects from the southern foothills will fly long distances to the north to lay eggs. After all, for insect eggs, too high humidity is unbearable.
The formation of saline-alkali land also benefits from relatively scarce precipitation, but it is inseparable from precipitation.
Only after rainfall, the salts, trona and other minerals in the soil will be dissolved by water, float to the ground, and then gradually dried by sunlight and wind, turning into crystals. If there is no precipitation, there will be no salt-alkali crystals. Once there is too much precipitation, the salt-alkali crystals here will be dissolved again and disappear, making them unavailable for insects to use.
Insects nearby regard this salt-alkali land as a geomantic treasure, and come here to replenish valuable salt and minerals. The open saline-alkali land has sparse plants, and only a few salt-tolerant plants survive.
Ants like this environment, and they use it as a hunting ground - there is an endless stream of insects that come to replenish the salt, which is an excellent prey resource. The nearby terrain is open and flat, which is also suitable for ants to move in groups, and dangers can be detected early. Just like human hunters in primitive societies, they are also accustomed to setting up ambushes where their prey drink water and lick salt to facilitate the acquisition of prey.
The hunting team arrived at the salt-alkali land at noon. The large group, led by male ants, hid behind a cowgrass on the edge of the salt-alkali land, while several retired soldier ants went separately to explore the salt-alkali land to detect whether there was any danger.
Soon, the older soldier ants came back one after another. They did not find any arthropods that were a big threat on the saline-alkali land - scorpions, centipedes, praying mantises, etc.
So, the hunting team started to set off. Under the command of the male ants, thirty worker ants lined up in a sparse line, advancing in a search formation in front.
All the soldier ants stand guard around the male ants and follow the worker ants as a mobile force.
Soon, the worker ant team encountered some insects. These insects either had poor eyesight or other senses and failed to detect the advancing ant team in time; or they were focused on eating and ignored the danger; or they were unable to escape due to aging or injuries.
As soon as the worker ants see or come into contact with the prey, they will immediately grab any part of the prey's body and then release the scent information.
Nearby worker ants came over to help, and small and medium-sized insects could be subdued solely by the strength of the worker ants.
If they encounter a big one and the worker ants are not strong enough to kill the prey quickly, all the worker ants will start to release scent messages.
At this time, the soldier ants at the rear of the team will fill in and use their well-developed jaws to deliver a fatal blow to the enemy.
The hunting team did not gain much at first. The open salt-alkali land allowed many animals to discover the ants' plans early, and they hurriedly flew away or crawled away.
Only a few prey were caught, but the harvest was nothing to mention.
It wasn't until they were in the middle of the salt-alkali land that the hunting team found a target.
This is an earthworm.
Earthworms, commonly known as earthworms and eels, are representative animals of the class Oligochaeta of the phylum Annelida. Earthworms are saprophytic animals that generally live in humid environments and feed on decaying organic matter. Earthworms are rarely found in drier saline-alkali lands.
However, there happened to be a spring rain recently, and the saline-alkali land is relatively humid, and earthworms are notoriously indistinguishable. So on the roads in summer, you can often find earthworms that accidentally climbed onto the road at night and were dried into earthworms. This earthworm crawled to this land for some reason and became the target of the ants.
An earthworm is really a good prey for the hunting team. Its meat is delicate and rich, and it does not have any fatal resistance.
As a result, the worker ants and soldier ants launched attacks on the earthworms one after another, while the male ants could only plunder around the outside.
But earthworms are not easy prey to subdue. Compared with ants, earthworms are as huge as a long dragon, and their larger size gives them stronger resistance to blows.
Another characteristic of earthworms is that their body cavities are divided by diaphragms into multiple body chambers according to body segments, and each chamber is connected by small holes. Each body cavity is formed by the development of two left and right body cavity sacs. The parietal coelomic membrane is formed on the outside of the coelomal sac, and the visceral coelomic membrane is formed on the inner side except for most of the middle part, and the dorsal mesentery and ventral mesentery are formed on the dorsal and ventral sides. The abdominal mesentery of earthworms has degenerated, and only the part between the intestine and abdominal blood vessels exists; the dorsal mesentery has disappeared. The parts between the anterior and posterior body cavity sacs are closely connected to form a septum. Some species do not have a septum in the esophageal area.
This feature makes earthworms famous. Even if the earthworm is cut into several segments, as long as there is a complete chamber in this segment, it can develop into a complete earthworm again.
This characteristic also makes earthworms extremely difficult to kill by hunters like ants.
But the hunting team didn't care about this. They were determined to fight, swarmed up and pounced on the prey.
The earthworm didn't realize that it was in danger until it was attacked, and its poor senses realized that it was in danger. The huge earthworm struggled violently!
