Page 61 - The Miracle in the Ant

interesting. The ant approaches the aphid and starts shoving its belly.
The aphid gives a drop of digestive waste to the ant. The ant starts shov-
ing the belly of the aphid more and more to get more honey and sucks
the liquid that comes out. Then how do they utilize this sugared food
and what good is this food for them later on?
There is a great division of labour among honey ants in this phase.
Some ants are used as "jars" to keep the nectar collected by other work-
ers!…
In every nest, there is one queen, workers and also honey carriers.
The colonies of these ants are usually located near the dwarf oak trees
the workers can extract nectars from. After the workers carry the nectar,
once having swallowed it, to their nests, they take it out of their mouths
and pour it into the mouths of young workers who will keep the hon-
ey. These workers, nicknamed honeypots, use their own bodies to store
the sweet liquid food the colony often needs to get through hard times
in the desert. They are fed until they swell up to the size of blueberries.
Then they dangle like amber globes from the ceilings of their chambers
30
until called upon to regurgitate nectar to hungry sisters. While attached
to this ceiling, they look like a small and translucent bunch of grapes. If
any of them falls down, the workers return it to its previous position
right away. Honey in the honey pots weighs almost 8 times as much as
an ant.
In winter, or in the arid season, ordinary workers visit the honey pots
to meet their daily food demands. The worker ant places its mouth on
to the "pot’s" and the pot exudes a small drop of honey from its store
by contracting its muscles. The workers consume this honey of high nu-
tritional value as food in adverse seasons.
It is an interesting and awe-inspiring situation for a living being to
reach a weight 8 times its own, having decided to serve as a honey pot,
and to be able to live hanging from its feet without any harm coming to
it. Why have they felt the need to accept such a difficult and dangerous
position? Have they thought about this unique storage technique them-
selves and controlled their bodily developments accordingly? Just think,
while a man cannot even control the slightest development in his body,
how can an ant, who does not even have a brain in the real sense, do
this on its own?

Harun Yahya 61