Page 54 - Magnificence Everywhere

ANT HOTELS
If one creature helps another, and prepares an environment for its convenience
which meets its needs, this association certainly cannot be claimed to have occurred
by chance. One-to-one conformity between creatures that have no consciousness,
and the acts they perform to benefit each other, provide evidence for the deliberate
creation of these beings. Creatures living together were created with characteristics
that benefit each other through the agency of a sole Creator, that is, Allah. We can
give certain plants and ants as typical examples of this sort of mutually beneficial
creature pair.
There are deep holes in some plants which are called "domatia" in biological ter-
minology (small picture). The only function of these holes is to serve as a shelter for
ant colonies. In these plants, there are openings or thin windows of tissue which en-
able ants to get in and out of the plant easily. In these chambers, there are food bod-
ies that the plant produces with no known function other than the feeding of ants.
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They do not appear to have a real use for the plant. In short, domatia are very spe-
cial structures that have been created in order for ants to live. The heat and moisture
balance provides an ideal environment for ants. In these places marked by diligence
that are prepared for ants, the ants make themselves just as comfortable as people
staying at luxury hotels.
We can give as another example Philidris, which is a kind of ant species, and its
host plant Dischidia major. These make a collective "chemical production" through-
out their lives. The plant in question has no roots penetrating the soil, therefore it
gets support from other plants by wrapping around them. The plant has a very in-
teresting method for increasing its acquisition of carbon and nitrogen. Ants have an
area in these plants, called the "ant leaf," where they breed their offspring and store
organic remains (dead ants, pieces of other insects, etc.). The plant makes use of
these residues as a nitrogen source. Moreover, the inner surface of the leaf spaces
absorbs the carbon dioxide given out by the ant, and in the process decreases dehy-
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dration through pores. Preventing dehydration is very important for these ant
plants which grow in the tropical climates, because, they have no roots and cannot
Magnificence Everywhere have come about by chance. The plants could not have produced nutrition proper
reach water in the soil. So, ants supply two important needs of the plants in return
for the shelter provided to them.
It is not possible to claim that the structures seen in these two examples might

to ants and taken forms in conformity with them by chance. The cooperation be-
tween ants and plants is just one more piece of evidence for the marvelous balance

52 Allah , the only Creator, created on Earth.