Page 135 - Devotion Among Animals Revealing the Work of God

Cooperation and Solidarity Among Animals

fly that deposits its eggs onto the ants' heads. The maggots hatching
from these eggs will feed on the ant's head and decapitate it by eat-
ing into its brain. When carrying leaves, worker ants are defenseless
against these flies, but other ants will fight back for them. Smaller
ants from the same colony take up positions on the leaves being car-
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ried back to the nest and fight off these predatory flies.
5. Some ants feed on the highly sugary digestive wastes of
aphids, which is why they are known as honey ants. They carry this
sugary substance they extract from the aphids to their nest, where
they store it using a very original method. A few of the worker ants
serve as living storage tanks. Ants returning to their nest regurgitate

the food into their mouths, and those ants store it in their lower ab-
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domens, which can inflate to the size of blueberries. Each chamber
contains between 25 to 30 of them, each dangling from the ceiling,
where she remains immobile. Should one of them fall to the ground,
the other ants will return her to her original position.
These living storage tanks can hold up to eight times the origi-
nal mass of the ant. During winters or droughts, hungry ants visit
them to feed. The hungry insect puts her mouth into the mouth of
the "storage" ant which, by contracting the muscles around her lower
abdomen, delivers a drop of nectar to the visitor. These ants couldn't
possibly have developed such a method of storing food on their
own. Those that serve as living honey jars clearly demonstrate their
selfless devotion, by remaining suspended upside down from the
ceiling, carrying eight times their own body weight, expecting noth-
ing in return. Patiently they help to feed other ants of the colony, one
by one. Clearly, these ants' system and the physical capabilities that
make it possible couldn't be the results of chance. In each generation
of honey ants, a few take it upon themselves to serve in this way,
which proves that all of them act on the inspiration of their Lord
God.

6. One method that ants use to defend their colony is to commit

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