Juggernaut: Rise of the Zerg

Chapter 12 Reflections on Solving Food Problems

The midsummer sun is still vicious, and the original green grass has been sunburned listlessly.

The ants are still fearlessly crawling in the grass. The temperature in midsummer is not difficult for them. It is their natural mission to find food for the ant nest.

There are already three queen ants in No. [-]'s branch nest, and the number of ant colonies is increasing rapidly. They have already expelled other ants nearby, basically occupying a radius of more than ten meters from the river bank to the river bank.

At the same time, with the increase of ant colonies, under the instruction of Ling, the development of a new earthworm breeding room has been put on the priority agenda.

The two suitable places that were originally discovered have already started construction, and the one with the fastest progress has basically completed the main structure, and it can be completed by expanding it a little bit.

In the earthworm breeding room in the mother nest, the first batch of four earthworms had laid more than [-] eggs three days ago, and the second batch of ten earthworms left on purpose had grown into mature bodies. The last two days have also begun to combine with each other, and it is foreseeable that they will lay more eggs in the near future.

Obviously, the feeding room in the mother nest is absolutely unable to take on such a heavy responsibility. Zero urgently needs more feeding rooms to ensure that the earthworms can reproduce in large numbers.

The completion of the new breeding room in the sub-nest where No. [-] is located is good news for Zero. He plans to transfer the second batch of ten earthworms that have completed bonding to this sub-nest, so as to relieve the pressure on the nest .

After a few days, when another breeding room is completed, five of these ten earthworms will be put in, so that there is no need to transport them from the nest by plane again.

At present, it is still far away from the completion of the fast and safe passage between the branch nest and the mother nest. If you want to transport earthworms, you can only choose to do it on the ground.

This will lead to great danger. Unlike ants, earthworms are on the diet of most birds. If they are found by birds on the grassland during transportation, earthworms are almost impossible to survive.

In addition, in midsummer, the high temperature outside is also a deadly threat to earthworms who like humid environments.The scorching sun will evaporate all the water on their bodies, and within a short while, they will die of dehydration.

For this problem, Zero finally thought of a way, that is, to carry out this activity at night.This keeps most diurnal birds out of the way, and the temperature at night is slightly comfortable for the earthworms, at least allowing them to persist in the new housing.

In order to welcome this batch of earthworms who are about to split the nest, Zero Command No. [-] dug a passage leading directly to the breeding room near the vent of the nest. This passage is relatively wide and can accommodate the fat body of the earthworms to pass through calmly.

After this transportation is completed, this channel will be abandoned by the ant colony, and finally re-filled by the worker ants with saliva.

The night transportation mission went smoothly. Under the condition that Zero dispatched an army of ant colonies to escort them, some nocturnal insects became the food of the ant colony without posing the slightest threat to them. Among them were some ferocious insects. Their counterattack also caused some casualties to the ant colony, but now that the mother nest has six ant queens, there is no need to worry about some casualties, and they will be replenished soon.

The second breeding room of the branch nest was soon completed with the efforts of No. [-] and the others. Zero commanded No. [-] to transfer five of the earthworms to the new breeding room.

Five days later, these earthworms also finished laying eggs one after another.

Zero has calculated the current efficiency of earthworms in providing food. He found that an adult earthworm is about [-] ants of other ant species for a month's ration, which can satisfy a queen under normal circumstances for two months and fully reproduce. A month's consumption.

The normal situation is the state of maintaining the number of ant colonies at ordinary times, and the reproductive state is the state of expanding the ant colony as much as possible.

One earthworm larva is about one month's ration for two ordinary ants, or it can meet the consumption of a queen ant for six days under normal conditions and three days under reproductive conditions.

After the earthworms combine to lay eggs, they start to hatch in about 30 days, and after about a season, they will become adult earthworms, and the adult earthworms will combine to lay eggs again.

A cultivation cycle is about four months. An average adult earthworm can lay more than ten eggs each time, and two to three earthworm larvae can be hatched from each earthworm egg.

Calculated in this way, if Zero initially had ten adult earthworms and had enough breeding rooms, then after one month, he would have at least two hundred to three hundred earthworm larvae.

These larvae can meet half a month's consumption of a colony with only one queen ant. If they grow into adults after another two months, they can meet the consumption of five queen ant colonies for one month without considering the situation of laying eggs. !
Of course, this income does not seem to solve the food problem of the ant colony, but if there is enough space, the number of these earthworms will increase exponentially!
This also means that if the space is sufficient, they will soon be able to satisfy the entire food expenditure of the ant colony!

"So there are still not enough venues..." Zero thought.

Relying only on naturally formed stones as a breeding ground is obviously too dependent on luck, and it is impossible to replicate on a large scale.

If we want to raise earthworms on a large scale, we must find an easy and replicable way to replace them.

"However, given the current capabilities of the ant colony, how can we do this?"

Zero doesn't seem to be doing anything either.

If the ants were bigger and stronger, they might be able to cooperate to move the stone to do the job.But if this is the case, maybe the ants don't need to use earthworms as food.

Unable to think of a way, Zero can only put it on hold temporarily. It is not bad to use the three existing feeding rooms to relieve a small part of the food pressure. After the eggs produced by earthworms hatch and larvae, they can be eaten as food immediately. A lot of progress.

"It would be great if there was no food problem..."

If there is no food restriction, the ant colony will be able to expand exponentially unscrupulously, and soon, there will be no enemies on this piece of land.

Even the birds in the sky will be overwhelmed by the overwhelming colony of ants if they dare to provoke them.

Only then will the ants really gain a firm foothold on this land.

"Let the ants in each sub-nest pay attention at all times. Opening up more breeding rooms is a major issue related to the survival of the ant colony. If you can't find a substitute, at least find enough natural places."

Zero made a decision and handed it over to the ant colony for faithful execution.

However, in the following period of time, there was no good news except that a sub-nest in the east found a place suitable for raising earthworms again.

　Please collect and recommend tickets! ! !

　　


(End of this chapter)