Page 101 - The Miracle in the Ant

vae, carried them immediately to the chambers with rough textured
walls. For the following two weeks, scientists tracked the level of ra-
dioactivity in the plant to prove that insect remnants were carried along
the trunk after being assimilated by the plant. The scientists proved that
the radioactivity was carried all over the plant, since it absorbed nutri-
tional materials. 67

Piper Plant and Brown Ant
The relationship between the piper plant and the ants is perhaps the
most interesting of all these we have looked at so far. The ant plant
called piper (treelets in the black pepper family) grows in the shade of
the tropical forest of Central America. It is a plant that provides both
food and shelter for brown ants (Pheidole Bicornis). By the time young
Piper trees have just two or three full-sized leaves, one of the leaf bases
- hollow swellings between the branch and the leaf itself – usually con-
tains a Pheidole queen. The queen colonizes a Piper sapling by chew-
ing an entrance hole and laying eggs inside the leaf base. When her eggs
first hatch into larvae, she and the young occupy one of the leaf bases,
but as the colony grows, the worker ants advance gradually throughout
the stem pith tissue, and the entire plant becomes a domicile. 68
This plant is also a source of food for the ants. The inside surface of
the expanded leaf bases produces for them single-celled food bodies.
Ants pluck these oil-and protein-rich morsels from the walls and feed
them to their larvae. 69
These rich foods that the ants will perhaps never find elsewhere, are
presented to them by the piper. These ants move towards the pipers that
will provide them with the best care, shelter and food each year and
build their nests in the parts of the plant most suitable for them.

"Smart" Piper

The piper plant that serves as a food source has another very inter-
esting feature. Other plant species keep on producing food even after
their colonies leave, yet piper plants do this only when ants are present.
Scientists have noticed that the plant stops food production in the ab-
sence of brown ants (Pheidoles). 70

Harun Yahya 101