Chapter 9: The Red Ants' Relentless Predator
Expedition to the Great Army. In my Wild Stone Garden, there are many red ants. These little insects are very peculiar, they are not very good at feeding their children, let alone looking for food, and sometimes they don't know how to pick up food when they are close to it. You can't help but wonder, they're so lazy that they won't starve, right? Don't worry, these little bugs aren't that stupid. Isn't it unreasonable that they don't do their own work, but they let their servants take care of all the housework, and they don't pay their servants?
As for the ** of these servants, of course, they are not hired for money, but the pupae they steal from other ant nests, and after these pupae hatch into small adults, they are called by them as small servants to do all kinds of things for them. The methods of red ants are very despicable, and they are really despicable.
Whenever June and July come, these red ants often travel in an expeditionary force that is five or six meters long. If there's nothing to admire on the road, they're always in a neat formation. If a black ant nest is suddenly discovered, the team will immediately be in chaos. The leading ants in front of them would stop and scatter into a chaotic heap, as if they were studying something. The ants behind didn't know what was going on in front of them, so they hurried up with a strong curiosity and joined the crowd of ants in the pile. If it turns out that this is just a false alarm, all the members will line up again, one moment into the meadow, the other into the trail, as if looking for something.
Sometimes, with a bit of luck, they don't go far to find a nest of black ants. Without the consent of their masters, these savage creatures broke into the nursery of the black ants and took their chrysalis away. Seeing their barbaric behavior, the black ants are of course unwilling to let their children be taken away, and will fight to the death. However, the red ant army was superior in numbers, and the disparity between the forces of the two sides was too great, and as a result, the black ants were defeated, and the red ants bit the chrysalis with their big jaws and returned triumphantly.
When the army of red ants set out on the expedition, they did not care what kind of road they took, whether it was a lawn, a pile of rocks, or a pile of dead leaves, they were not afraid. But on the way back, they certainly don't wander around, but follow the route they follow to get back to the nest, and they never change their route, even though the road may be difficult or there is a better path next to it.
For the red ants' persistent approach to turning back, I understand it like this: the red ant army goes on an expedition together, the road is tortuous, and they will turn left and right on the way forward, and if they don't go back the way they came, there is a chance that they will not find a home. Because they don't want to get lost, they have no choice but to go back the way they came.
Super memory.
Red ants often wander far from home, but how do they find their way back? Whether it was by sight or smell, I did not know, so I was eager to study these small and marauding little robbers thoroughly.
I spent several afternoons watching them go about it, and I didn't get anything out of it, and I had to find a helper for this time-consuming task. It just so happened that my six-year-old granddaughter, Ruth, was very interested in this, and she promised to help me keep an eye on the red ants at all times.
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One day, she excitedly came to call me and told me that a team of red ants had come out and they had entered a nest of black ants. She marked the route with a few small pebbles along the way as she followed behind. I happily ran after Ruth. When I saw that the route was 100 meters away, I knew I had plenty of time to do the experiment. So, I used a broom to sweep the route of the ants about a meter wide. The powdery material on the pavement was swept away, and I replaced it with something else. Next, I split the exit of the road into four sections, a few steps away from each other.
The army of ants came, and when they reached the first division, the vanguard seemed very hesitant, some lingered in place, some retreated and returned, and some scattered from the side to avoid this strange area. Everyone suddenly lost order in a chaotic manner, and gathered together into a pot of porridge. At this time, the troops behind also caught up, and more and more ants gathered at the dividing place, and everyone was at a loss to shake their small tentacles. Eventually, a few brave ants walked onto the swept pavement, followed by the others. Some ants took a detour and also walked the same way. In the remaining three divisions, the ants did the same, hesitating at first, but eventually returning to the nest along the path of the pebbles.
This experiment seems to prove that ants really have a sense of smell, that they find their way by smelling powdery things that have not been swept off the road, or by the smell of the residue that I sweep to the side of the road. However, I can't be sure if this result is true, so I'm going to do another experiment to get rid of all the smelly ingredients.
A few days later, Ruth came running again to tell me that the red ants had been dispatched. This was expected by me, because red ants are restless on such hot and humid afternoons, especially before storms. I opened the valve of the water pipe, and rushed the raging water towards the path of the red ants, the width of the water was as wide as a big stride, the length could not be calculated, and it took almost a quarter of an hour to rinse. After a while, the red ants returned with the loot, and they hesitated for a long time, and finally some brave red ants stepped on the pebbles in the water. Some red ants fall into the water, but they never give up their prey. Some of the red ants were washed away by the water, some stepped on the wheat straw floating on the water, some climbed on the dead leaves, and in short, most of the red ants crossed the river along the original route and returned home.
Next, I did another experiment, found the exit of a route, and rubbed the ground a few times with fresh mint that had just been picked from the flower bed on the way the red ants were about to pass, and then covered the road with mint leaves. When the red ants returned, they did not feel uncomfortable with the place where the mint had been rubbed, and in the place where the leaves were covered, they hesitated for a moment, but they also passed.
I conclude from this that the ant's sense of smell has no effect on their search for a given route, and I am sure of that. Next, I began to move on to the next step of my plan, which was to find out what the red ants relied on to find their way home.
I made a few changes in the path of the red ants, the first was to spread a few large newspapers on the road and press them down with small stones; The second is to cut the road with a thin layer of sand. When the red ants reached the first place of change, they were equally hesitant, scouting and trying from all sides, and finally made their way through the paper-covered area. When it came to the second change, they hesitated and tried, but it quickly passed.
Therefore, red ants have very limited vision, and they can only see a small area in front of them. I make small changes and they feel like they're unrecognizable. The anxiety and uneasiness they exhibit in front of the altered object illustrates this point. However, as they pass through the suspicious area, some ants recognize the familiar place, while others follow them, and the army successfully finds its way home.
Now, I realized that the reason why red ants can find familiar scenery and places is that they have an accurate memory and can memorize the routes they pass. Sometimes, if the red ants find that there are too many trophies in an ant's nest, and they can't carry them all at once, they will come to this place repeatedly to carry the loot in the next few days, and they don't need to search for it on the way, but go straight to the target along the same path they have taken. This also shows that red ants can keep their memories for a few days without forgetting.
That day, I waited near the red ant's nest, put a dead leaf in front of a red ant and let it climb up, and then put the leaf two or three paces away from the main army, where the red ants rarely came. After crawling down from the dead leaves, the red ant began to wander around casually, and of course, it still had loot in its large jaws. It walked in a hurry, but it carried the direction of the nest on its back, getting farther and farther away from its companions. It walked and stopped, as if looking for the right direction, but it got lost, only two steps from home.
This fully shows that red ants have no sense of direction at all, but can only remember the places they have visited. In this way, these little fellows have no special skills other than robbing other people's chrysalis to be servants, but they are just a group of lazy little robbers.
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