Brian and Tony, who are modeled after protecting and caring for pangolins, are so caring that they don't leave them alone in the sanctuary, but stay in custody.

The two held up a video camera to track the pangolins, checking their living conditions in the reserve to make sure they would survive there.

If there aren't enough ants in the grasslands of the reserve to feed them, the two take some of these pangolins and send them elsewhere.

If ants and termites are hard to find in the grasslands of the reserve, they will take the pangolins with them.

Yang Shubao is confident that there are a lot of termites and ants in the reserve, and he once cooperated with the police to dismantle a smuggling gang, from which many ant queens were obtained and brought with them to the grassland, where they successfully expanded the population.

The easiest way to find ants is to go to the grove where the armadillo lizards are located, where there are termite nests, which are two meters tall and have super termite nests.

The termite nest is like an earthen castle, and there is no telling what kind of world is hidden underground.

But the first step for the pangolins was not to find the termite nest, but to find the knife man of the ant world.

Leafcutter ants.

This is a rather magical type of ant that cuts off the leaves of the plant and transports them back to their nests along a fixed ant path, forming a long queue. A nest of such ants consumes as much fresh leaves as a cow.

Leafcutter ants eat leaves, grass leaves, fruit leaves, flower petals, etc., and they also use these plants to accumulate and ferment to grow fungi, which is a very interesting ant.

If it weren't for the pangolins leading the way, Yang Shubao wouldn't even know that there was such a big family of leafcutter ants on his territory.

He brought back too many queens and too many varieties, so he didn't know the development of the ants.

Later, the number of leafcutter ants increased, but when they traveled, they had grass leaves on their heads, which was a good cover for their whereabouts, and Yang Shubao did not notice them.

There are too many large animals in the reserve, and the small ants go unnoticed.

Yang Shubao followed Brian and Tony to see the leaf-cutting ants in shock, they had already walked out of the ant path!

This is an ant's innate skill, once a pathfinder worker ant finds a suitable plant, it leaves a path of smell and goes back to gather its companions. Then, an army of ants containing worker ants of different sizes and sizes set off for the work site.

Mr. Lu Xun once said that there is no road in the world, and when ants walk a lot, there will be an ant road

Seeing a team of small ants carrying many blades far larger than himself lined up, Yang Shubao was stunned.

What shocked him even more was that some ants were so shameless that they stayed on the leaves and let their companions carry them on their backs.

What is this? Rubbing a car? Hitchhiking?

Tony was thrilled when he saw these ants: "God forbid, such beautiful leafcutter ants, I saw leafcutter ants, a huge colony of leafcutter ants!"

"They're Barcheleaf ants, right? I recognize them. "Brian is equally pleased.

Yang Shubao said: "Okay, seeing this group of ants, your favorite pangolin can live here, right?"

"Absolutely. "You've got a huge colony of leaf-cutting ants here, absolutely, look at these big ants in the transport team, they're soldier ants, they're very powerful guys, they can cut through the leather in their jaws, and they can even kill a mouse when they gather in a swarm." ”

The ants he showed Yang Shubao were indeed relatively large, and the workers were responsible for transporting the blades, and their heads were only about two millimeters wide, which was very small.

With a head width of 7 mm and a body length of more than 1.7 cm, soldier ants are a force to show off in the ranks, and if a bug appears in the ranks to disrupt order, they will swarm and divide the corpse.

That's pretty tough!

"When the population of leafcutter ants reaches 100,000, the first batch of soldier ants will be born, and according to the queue of soldiers when they attack, we can know that there are several batches of soldier ants, and there must have been millions of worker ants in the nest. Tony explained with relish.

A pangolin spotted the leafcutters, but instead of beaking them directly, they squatted on the path to observe for a while, and then followed the leafcutters on the march.

Casting a long line to catch big fish, this pangolin is going to find the nest of leafcutter ants.

Leafcutter ants are not fools, and if pangolins eat here, they will scatter and hide in the weeds.

In this way, pangolins can't eat many ants at all, and they will only waste their energy in vain, so they will not be anxious to lower their mouths when they find ants, but follow the ant colony to find the anthill, and then go straight to the yellow dragon.

The ant road is bustling, and the small worker ants are very slow to carry the large leaves.

But that's because they're so small, they're actually amazing and tough, and if you zoom them in to the size of dogs, these worker ants can run up to 15 kilometers in one go at a speed of 26 kilometers per hour, and they can carry more than 300 kilograms of weight during that time......

This is a feat that no mammal can do!

Termite nests protrude from the ground, like earthen castles, and leaf-cutter nests are much more hidden, hiding underground.

This doesn't mean that termite nests will be larger than leafcutter nests, which are numerous and intelligent – they are really smart and able to use fermented plants to feed fungal species of mushrooms, something that only humans in nature can do.

Leafcutter ants have evolved to the point where they can farm, and they can also build buildings, unlike termite nests, which are only magnificent and complex, leafcutter nests have precise functional zoning.

For example, they have multiple farms in their nests for fungi to grow, and the leaves are transported back to the farms, where the leaves are cut into smaller pieces by smaller ants until they are chewed into beds.

For example, some areas of their nests are garbage dumps, and uneaten leaf veins and fungal rhizomes will be bitten and sent to these places to let them rot and decompose.

The pangolin chased the worker ants to the leaf-cutter nest, where it stretched out its small claws that had been in its arms and prepared to burrow and feed.

Tony and Brian are a little sorry, there is no doubt that there is a high-level leaf-cutting ant nest here, this thing can be called an underground city, the nest can reach a maximum depth of ten meters, the widest part covers an area of dozens of square meters, including large and small nests, which live in millions of ants, and also cultivate a large number of fungi.

Yang Shubao also sighed: "For the species of ants, this is a civilized city. ”

Tony said: "It's not very civilized, it can only be called an ancient civilization. ”

"Like Pompeii?"

"Yes, Pompeii. ”

"Well, the Destroyer of Worlds has reappeared, hapless Pompeii. Brian lifted a patch of grass, and the pangolin rubbed its little front paws and moved.

Buffet, let's eat!