Page 67 - The Miracle in the Ant

product food. 35
Since legionary ants do not have a fixed nest, they are al-
ways moving. The movements and migrations of the colonies
depend on the production cycle. The queen produces ap-
proximately 25-35,000 eggs during two days each month. A
few days before the laying of the eggs, the colony halts and
gathers in a wide area. The ants hang on to each other by their
hook shaped legs and form a temporary nest. The empty
space in the middle acts as a chamber ready for the queen and
the new generation. Here, naturally, the legs and joints of the
ants at the very top are subject to excessive loading. Yet, since
they are built to endure weights several hundred times more
than their own weights, they can hold the whole colony with-
out much problem. 36
To hunt most efficiently, the ants time their movements to
the needs of a developing brood, alternating between seden-
tary and nomadic phases. During the resting period of about
20 days, the fat, immobile queen produces 50,000 to 100,000
eggs while other offspring lie in the quiescent pupal stage. On
most days, workers, foraging only for themselves and the
queen, make short raids from the nest in a rosette pattern. On
each raid they vary their direction by an average of 123 de-
grees, thus avoiding recombing the same ground. 37
Chained together, army ants cre-
Ants can unerringly calculate the 123° by themselves,
ate a living nest. On the move at
something which man cannot calculate without an instrument. all times, a colony of army ants
This would appear to indicate a thorough knowledge of math- can make no permanent home on
ematics. Yet ants do not know math, they cannot even count. the grounds or in trees. But each
night the workers join together to
So this shows that what they do is done by special inspiration,
create shelters out of their own
and not consciously. bodies. First, several ants choose
When the first larvae hatch, workers collect food and, in an object near the ground, like a
log, and dangle from it with their
the meantime, the community stays stationary. Pieces of food
claws interlocked. Other ants ar-
are fed directly to the larvae. The queen’s being ready for lay- rive, run down the strands, and
ing again usually coincides with earlier larvae’s transition into fasten on until strands become
ropes that fuse into a mass a me-
the pupa stage. In this stage, the community stops once again.
ter across called a bivouac; home
The coinciding of the laying of eggs by the queen and the lar- is the entire colony of 200,000 to
vae going into the pupa stage indicates a conscious planning 750,000 individuals. At the center
rests the queen and her brood. In
since it decreases the time for which the army stops.
the morning ants begin to disen-
tangle to go out and raid.
Harun Yahya