Page 59 - The Miracle in the Ant

In the chambers we see above, seeds to be used in the arid season are stored
by harvester ants.
seeds from other objects mistakenly brought back. Some groups of ants
stay in the nest by the hour, chewing the seeds’ contents and thus pro-
ducing so-called ant bread. The ants were once thought to use some
learned process to convert the seeds’ starch into the sugar they eat. It is
now known that the abundant saliva they secrete while chewing ac-
complishes this transformation. 29
The ants we speak of here have not, of course, had any education in
chemistry. Neither can they anticipate that their saliva will transform the
seeds they collect randomly into sugar that they can eat. Yet, the lives of
these ants depend on a series of chemical transformations that they do
not know about and cannot know about. When even men do not know
of such a transformation process taking place in the bodies of the ants
– and they have just learned the details in the last few years – how have
the ants managed to be fed by this method for millenniums?

Honey Ants

Many types of ants are fed with the digestive wastes of aphids called
"honey". This substance in fact bears no relation to real honey. However,
the digestive waste of aphids, which have fed on plant sap, is given this
name because it contains a high proportion of sugar. Thus, the workers
of this species, called honey ants, collect honey from aphids, coccidae,
and flowers. The ants’ method of collecting honey from the aphid is very

Harun Yahya 59