Page 110 - The Miracle in the Ant

hard during combat, either by enemy ants or by an attacking predator,
they contract their abdominal muscles violently, bursting open the body
wall and spraying the secretions onto the foe. 74
Such a serious sacrifice by the ants cannot, of course, be explained
by either natural selection or by the "evolutionist socialization process".
As emphasized many times before, the creature which carries out this
very important sacrifice is not a man of a certain intelligence, education,
sense and conscience, but an ant. Even if we think that ants may have
gone through some physical change – there are ant fossils nevertheless
that have remained unchanged for 80 million years – it is quite obvious
that physical changes alone would not equip it with such features. No
mutation experienced by a living being can cause its sudden transfor-
mation into a thinking, judging, feeling and sensing individual.
Even if we assumed that there had been an ant one day who decid-
ed to sacrifice itself to put up such a defence, it would of course be im-
possible for it to load this idea into its genes and transmit it to other ants.

Slave Trading Ants
The relationship between (Formica Subintegra), the parasitic ant and
its slave (Formica Subserica) is interesting because it indicates the effect
of chemical signals on the social lives of ants. "Slavery" is one of the in-
telligent war tactics of ants and maybe the most interesting one. 75
Sometimes, if the soldiers of a colony realize that they can easily
crush another colony, they may start hunting for slaves. They invade the
nest of the other colony, kill the queen and take as loot the nectar-filled
"honey pots" – those ants that fill their bodies with nectar. The most im-
portant point is their stealing the larvae of the queen. These larvae later
on turn into young ants which will become "slave ants." They will look
after the growing children of the colony queen and will search for and
store food for the dominant colony.
When parasite ants attack another ant colony, the reason that the sol-
diers of the other colony cannot prevent the theft of their eggs and co-
coons is a type of pheromone given out by the parasite ants. This
pheromone is similar to a warning substance that exists in that colony
and when it is secreted in large quantity by parasite ants, it results in the
ants’ running away instead of protecting their colonies.

Kar›nca Mucizesi
110 THE MIRACLE IN THE ANT