Reborn little broken ball, I can mod myself

Chapter 9 A Day in the Life of an Ant

sizzle-

"It's so sweet!" Ma Yi climbed up the branch of the plant, put his head to the abdomen of an aphid and took a sip, his eyes lit up slightly.

The taste of aphid honeydew is actually a bit like sugar water soaked in maltose. It is sweet and refreshing, not greasy at all.

He had never thought in the past that this humble aphid could actually produce such a delicious taste!
No one will study this either.

After all, this aphid is only a few millimeters in size, and the aphid honeydew produced is only enough for an ant to take a sip.

The volume of this aphid honeydew can be imagined.

It takes a lot of effort to get enough for a normal human to take a sip!
And there is another possibility.

The taste of aphid honeydew is for ants, and perhaps humans cannot adapt to it.

However, these are not what Ma Yi should consider now.

All he knows is that this thing is really good!
After eating the honeydew of more than a dozen aphids, Ma Yi stopped.

He has the talent of [Gluttony], which allows him to digest food almost as soon as he eats it.

It's just that the evolution points that aphid honeydew can increase are a bit miserable. There are more than ten of them, but only 0.001 is added.

You know, he ate a big caterpillar before, but it only gained 0.01 evolution points!

In other words, it would take hundreds of aphids to produce honeydew, which is barely worth the amount of honeydew produced by one big caterpillar.

This efficiency gap is too big.

The only advantage is safety.

The aphids were probably used to being grazed by ants. No matter how much Ma Yi sucked them, they remained motionless and seemed resigned.

While the aphids were not paying attention, Ma Yi tried to eat a few more aphids.

This aphid is only about 2mm each. With the current size of the ant, it can barely fit into one bite.

He didn't stop until he ate three.

These three aphids added 0.001 evolution points to him.

Almost thirty aphids are equal to the weight of one large caterpillar.

After verifying the number of aphids, Ma Yi did not continue to eat. Instead, he left his pheromone in a hidden place nearby and left the "aphid ranch".

Eating aphids directly is a waste of resources.

This aphid honeydew is a sustainable resource. When his "children" hatch, he may try to snatch it away.

After leaving the "Aphids Ranch", Ma Yi wandered outside for a long time, but gained almost nothing.

In fact, this is also a basic and universal principle in nature.

Most of the time, animals that live in groups are weaker than animals that live alone.

As a solitary ant, it is really difficult to hunt prey in this dangerous jungle.

Finally, seeing that it was getting dark, Ma Yi returned along the same route with some roots of Houttuynia cordata and rushed towards his "love hole".

Houttuynia cordata can clear away heat, detoxify, reduce swelling and treat sores. It is one of the more common herbal plants in the wild, and Ma Yi is naturally familiar with it.

He tried it and found that even ants could eat it, so he chewed off a piece.

When he went back, he deliberately took a detour, hoping to go to the aphid pasture to steal a wave of aphid honeydew.

However, when he arrived at the aphid pasture, he found a group of ants busy.

The size of the ants was about the same as before, but the color was slightly different.

"Red imported fire ant!" Ma Yi was slightly startled, but also suddenly realized.

Red imported fire ants are extremely destructive ants. Long before the Catastrophe, they had been dispersed throughout the world on Lu Yuan Planet due to human economic and trade activities, and had made nests everywhere, and even spawned many branch groups.For example, the current black fire ants in Ma Yi are actually a branch group of red imported fire ants.

And grazing aphids is exactly what fire ants are good at.

Thinking about it this way, everything makes sense.

Even pushing forward a little further, the black fire ant group where Ma Yi belongs may be a split from the red fire ant group in front of him.

It was just that the princess ant that happened to get married or the male ant that mated with her mutated, causing her offspring to become black fire ants, which continued to form Ma Yi's original small black fire ant colony.

Then, he and the queen got married again, and once again split into a small emerging ant colony.

This is how ant colonies develop.

But at this moment, Ma Yi didn't dare to go up and "recognize his ancestors and return to his clan."

There is no such thing as ancestors or ancestry in the ant community. It is not uncommon for two ant communities that are relatively close to each other to have wars break out and compete for each other's territory.

Even ants in the same nest can kill each other.

After death, the ant corpses are often taken back to the cave as food.

If he is discovered by those fire ants on the opposite side, Ma Yi's fate will probably be that he will be beaten by them, and then his body will be taken back as a food reserve.
However, he did not leave immediately, but quietly hid in place and observed this "strong neighbor".

His home is less than an hour away from here, which is quite close.

As the saying goes, one mountain cannot accommodate two tigers, and one place cannot accommodate two ant nests.

They will have a battle in the future.

As a scout, the emphasis on intelligence is almost engraved in his bones.

There are more than 30 red fire worker ants currently busy in the aphid pasture, and there are also more than a dozen soldier ants guarding them.

Due to the difference in body shape, the two are easily distinguishable.

Soldier ants are slightly smaller than male ants, only 6~7mm.

Worker ants are smaller than soldier ants, only 2.5~4mm.

However, the combat power among ants is not entirely determined by their size. Although male ants are slightly larger than soldier ants, their combat power is not as good as that of soldier ants.

Ma Yi estimated that if he was fighting head-on now, he would only be able to deal with three or four red fire soldier ants at the same time.

Of course, the specifics have to be told in practice.

This colony of fire ants has obviously been herding aphids for some time, and the workers are quite skilled at their business.

I saw one red fire worker ant crawling up the plant stem, finding the abdomen of the aphid, taking a sip, holding the aphid honeydew in its mouth, and then crawling down the plant stem.

After all the red fire worker ants had taken a bite, the soldier ants took them away.

Ma Yi put down the Houttuynia cordata rhizome and hid it, then quietly followed the group of fire ants.

He needs to figure out the location of the fire ant nest, the size of the colony, etc., and make plans for the future.
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When Ma Yi accepted the identity of Ant and began to work hard for a happy life in the future, little did he know that a pair of eyes were also looking at him.

After observing Ma Yixiao for a long time, Lu Yuan was still a little confused.

Although this mutated black fire ant has the word "mutation", in fact it only mutated because it was contaminated and is no longer a native species.

But ants are still ants.

Even though Ma Yi, an ant, has a golden finger that can continuously evolve by swallowing energy, Lu Yuan still doesn't think highly of him.

You said, why is it not the "Queen of the Ant Tribe"?

Wouldn't it be better to give birth directly?

(End of this chapter)