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The windmill fortress of the Siberian artery and the treehouses of the Amazon jungle have a distinctive feature - they are in an extremely inhospitable and uninhabited area. This led to a difficult problem for Downing: "What if there is an accident and external supplies cannot reach these nodes within a few days?" "Because of the existence of the railway guerrillas, this is quite a real problem. When this problem arises, there is water, electricity, but no food. Food is at the heart of the matter.

On this day, Downing was at home with his daughter, telling her the wonderful story of Amber. As the president of the Federation, he was very quiet and rarely appeared in public, leaving the members of the Cabinet to do their own business. The cabinet members were very idle, because they left most of the affairs to the provincial parliaments, finance to the European Central Bank, and only foreign affairs and defence seemed to be left at the federal level.

In addition, the German Confederation established the Federal Drug Administration and issued the world's first narcotics control decree, and opium, marijuana, coca leaf, etc. became contraband. At the same time, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, and all Windsor transport arteries have strongly declared that prohibited items are not allowed except for research and medical purposes.

The Indian government announced a ban on the commercial cultivation of opium poppy, and the Qing government seized the opportunity to announce a ban on opium. The legislators supported by opium dealers such as Jardine Matheson were defeated under the tremendous pressure of the Windsor consortium, and Downing finally made the "little thing" of banning opium.

Downing, who was telling Erin about amber, suddenly stared at an ant in amber in a daze, and forgot to tell. Erin, who was already more than two years old and spoke German well, found that her father was "solidified" like amber, and shook his arm in dissatisfaction: "Why doesn't Daddy speak?" ”

Of course, Tang Ning thought of an interesting idea, and smiled: "Okay, keep talking!" Let's talk about this ant, it is a fairly successful animal, it evolved from a kind of bee, and it was roughly the same age as the birth of dinosaurs, and it is generally believed to be in the White Period. Dinosaurs survived by getting bigger, and this little thing chose the opposite path of evolution, they became so small that it was difficult for ordinary predators to catch it, and even if they did, they would not be able to fill their stomachs. In the end, the terrible dinosaurs that grew up to be huge and went extinct in a natural disaster, and these little ones became stronger and stronger. Biologists estimate that ants make up about 15 to 20 percent of the total biomass! That's a staggering number, don't you say? ”

It's a pity that the baby just laughs and has no mathematical concepts. For a person with knowledge of secondary biology, he will be amazed when he hears this number, the size of the ant clan is really beyond imagination. Downing always gives his baby the most novel toys in the world, and this time, he decided to collect the "ant colony".

By pouring 200 degrees of liquid aluminum into the ant colony and letting it flow through the entire anthill, you can obtain a three-dimensional mold of the entire colony, and then cast it in transparent glass to reproduce the ant colony. The millions, tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of ants in an entire colony are all descendants of an ant queen, and if you invite the queen ant into the glass colony, you can get a nest of living ant empires.

Is there anything more curious than such a toy? In order to get a perfect mold, the pouring process must be carried out continuously, and Tangning even designed a "mold collection machine" weighing more than ten tons based on the aluminum smelter qì. At least? Hehe, don't underestimate the architectural talents of these little guys, their underground empire is bigger than you can imagine, otherwise how could they become one of the most successful animals in the world?

As a successful animal, the most important thing is that the nutrients obtained from food far exceed the ability of the individual to reproduce, and the calories and proteins obtained by predation are the most efficient, but it has a problem, other organisms will evolve strong defenses, even if it is a plant, their main body such as leaves, branches, etc. must be low-calorie and low-nutritional, and only when it is necessary to spread seeds will the plant willingly grow fruit to entertain guests from all over the world.

As clever as a human being, he came up with the most efficient means of animal husbandry - not to eat livestock, but to eat the milk they produce. The milk industry is an amazing means of obtaining food, however, our ant brothers evolved a similar method hundreds of millions of years ago, and the best of them is the leaf-cutting ant.

Leaves are a low-nutrient food that smart ants don't eat, they are picked back to feed aphids, and these aphids will give back to the ant brother with honeydew. Leafcutter ants are masters of animal husbandry! As a result, their colonies are probably the largest in the Ant Empire.

Think of the abundance of foliage in the Amazon jungle and you can imagine the success of the leafcutter ant. Interested in natural wonders, Downing naturally headed to southern Brazil to harvest a colony of leaf cutter ants. Trampling an ant to death can be laughed off, and killing millions at once will make people feel compassionate, and Downing's mold team will prioritize pouring those abandoned colonies, if you can't find them......

Of course, Downing had to carry out such a fun thing himself, and the work of the chairman of the Federation was abandoned, and he went to Central America to collect the colony of leafcutter ants. The city of Manaus, located in the middle of the Amazon jungle, which thrived on wild rubber, was the site of the mission.

After a week of exploration, the ant search team finally found an abandoned leafcutter ant colony, which seems to be quite large. The Pisces airship crane moved the heavy "construction" machinery to the site, and in the midst of all the attention, this time the collection was eye-catching, pouring a whole day, 8 hours passed, and the sun was about to set, and the project still showed no sign of completion.

The larger the amount of work, the more excited Tang Ning became, and the workers in charge of manual excavation were as earth-colored as dirt, how long would it take to dig? In order to keep the project going, the airship continued to buy aluminum and transport it to the construction site, and after a jaw-dropping 4 days and 4 nights, the collection project was declared over.

It took two months of painstaking excavation to reveal the complete face of the Leafcutter Empire, which is 80 square meters wide and 15 meters deep, a veritable wonder of the world. After the appearance of the aluminum mold was put on display in the telegraph, readers were amazed.

The team enlisted one of Germany's most prestigious chandelier manufacturers to create the perfect glass nest that not only had to maintain its original appearance, but also had to have good transparency so that visitors could enjoy this underground wonder.

Of course, the members in Manaus will have to continue to dig up and get the queen of another leafcutter colony to Munich. The queen ant's survival depends on a large number of worker ants, soldier ants and aphid nests, which are also taken away as much as possible to ensure the survival of the queen ant.

Through the efforts of the entomologists, the ant empire soon settled in a huge ceilinged greenhouse, where hard-working worker ants went out every day to cut leaves to graze aphids from the branches they picked by the team. This giant ant chandelier has all the creatures lovers obsessed.

The most important thing to do is to give the baby a "reward" for the baby to make this leaf-cutting ant colony wonder raised in the real yàn animal farm, and the little Irene stared at the bright and beautiful eyes of the baby ant, and the appearance of the baby ant was secretly photographed by Tang Ning, becoming one of the most precious family photos.

Then, it's time to solve the "food" problem. With the exception of anteaters, there are very few animals that can eat ants as a staple food, and chimpanzees sometimes collect ants to eat, but not too many, and it would be an equally great food revolution if the technology could hunt this great survival master in large quantities. Downing was going to invent this method on the basis of this artificial ant colony.

According to Guò's observation of the queen's appearance in an artificial nest, she can produce 30,000 eggs a day, which means that an ant colony can continuously collect 30,000 ants. Of course, these ants can be eaten directly by humans, but this is a niche market, and it is estimated that this "delicacy" will not sell well in the civilized world, and it is more reliable to use them as an excellent source of protein for raising poultry.

Interestingly, only the adult leafcutter ants go out to work, while the juvenile worker ants graze aphids at home, which is easier. So the work of collecting adult ants is just a matter of doing something about where they have to go. Ignoring the tension with Madame Tang, Linfield rushed from London to Munich's animal farm to devise the means of harvesting leaf ants, and she chose the Faraday family's old profession - electricity.

Two small wires are placed on the road that must be passed, and the high-voltage current is used to paralyze the ants that pass by and drop them into the box prepared in advance. In the future, ant farms can turn on the electricity at a fixed time every day, collect a certain number of ants, and then call it a day in time.

The scheme was a success, and the little witch was delighted to see the poor worker ants falling down as they passed over the wires, which was the joy of a good harvest. However, Downing put forward an opinion, many workers who have just picked back the leaves have also fallen into the collection box, which not only makes the contents of the box impure, but also wastes the body of the leaf-cutting ants, if only there is a way to collect only the workers who did not have leaves when they set off.

Well, the Ant Killer adds a tiny quartz spring gravimeter to the wires, and only when the weight value falls below a certain threshold can the current be triggered, so that the ants with the blades can safely return to base. After rigorous testing, the production version of the leafcutter collector is ready to work.

Linfil said excitedly: "This kind of feed is so cheap, as long as the leaves are enough, will it surpass the Israeli breeding industry?" Is there a tailor-made farm for Brazilians? ”

Tang Ning laughed: "People in Central America can engage in this industry, but my original intention is not this, the serious thing is to solve the food source of the workers in the dense forest and wilderness in emergencies, I thought of collecting ants to solve it, but now it has developed into an ant breeding industry." Keep looking for a way, preferably one that can collect all species of ants in the wild, not just leafcutters, with a single collector. In this way, the food problem can be solved. ”

Linfil swallowed his saliva: "Eat ants directly?" ”

Tang Ning: "Well, it tastes good, do you want to try it?" ”

Linfield gave him a blank look, but she had already begun to use her brain to figure out how to invent a wild ant collector. Her original invention did allow random passing ants to be collected by electric shock, but this was too inefficient. Tang Ning reminded the little sister: "Ants have a habit to take advantage of - they will emit different smells after discovering food, and other workers will follow the route of sprinkling smell to carry food after smelling this smell, which is especially important for ants that use fruits and insect corpses as food sources, and I think wild ants are more of this type." ”

He has made it very clear that the key is to have a bait so that the ant carrying team can continue to be collected, but the difficulty is that the ants cannot be collected one by one, otherwise the smell on the route will disappear quickly, and there will be no ants to die later. The solution of the little sister is still a small gravity meter, but the logic is just the opposite, only if all the ants are shocked if they exceed a certain weight on the road they must travel, the carrying route will maintain a certain amount of smell until the bowl is full.

A wild survival ant collector is so done, and the follow-up field practice shows that the efficiency of collection is very high, and an hour can ensure the protein and calories of an adult for a day. In the field, the basic process is to find an insect as bait, then turn on the collector and watch the time, if it is one person, it will be about one hour, two people will be two hours, and so on.

It's much more reliable than chasing prey in the wild, unless you think you can run faster than a rabbit. If you shoot birds, people will come and go, can you beat them? Not to mention fighting poisonous snakes and beasts, which is the only job of professional wilderness survival experts, ordinary workers can't work so hard, and they don't have to work so hard to support their families, right?

People working in the field are required to keep at least one chicken, collect ants for the chickens to eat, and eat the chickens first when there is a crisis, and then eat the ants when it is not possible. Practice more often, and in times of crisis, "have food in your hands, and don't panic in your heart".

At 15 to 20 percent of the biomass of ants, how many ants must be in the huge Amazon jungle, these excellent sources of calories and protein, if used, could be the equivalent of developing a huge industry like a marine fishery. It may be more reliable than ant farming, because the deep jungle has formed an extremely rich ant colony for hundreds of millions of years, and with the ability of ants to reproduce and the regeneration capacity of the rainforest, it can be described as inexhaustible.

Downing thought of this, combined the concept of "longline" with ant collectors, and a great idea for the breeding industry was born. The airship in charge of the operation sprinkled a rope tied with an ant collector within a range of 60 kilometers, and there was a collector every 50 meters, a total of 1,200 of them, each harvesting 1 kilogram of ants, and each "casting the net" could collect 1,200 kilograms, and there could be tens of thousands of kilograms of ants in a day, which was comparable to ocean longline fishing. Compared to fish, ants are much more fertile and are not afraid of overfishing.

Of course, with the Amazon Forestry Commission in hand, even the possibility of overfishing has been extinguished. Large-scale industrialization has no one better than Downing, he personally designed the ant longline, the electricity used to shock the ants is directly connected to the wire that comes with the guò rope, and even each electric shock will produce an electrical signal, through the time when the electric signal arrives at the processing center, you can know which of the 1200 collectors sent the electric shock, so you can accurately grasp the entire collection process, in order to grasp the best time to close the net.

The collector is attached to the main rope, and when the 60-kilometer journey is completed, the hook is lowered, and it happens that there is a 30-meter-long fishing line between the main rope and the collector. (http：／／)。 The collector is spherical in shape so that it can reach the ground with minimal obstacles. Because of the introduction of wires, the central controller can control all operations, including opening the four doors to collect the balls, and each door becomes an ant bridge when opened. In order to ensure the correct opening posture of the collecting ball, there is a gravity sensor at the junction of the main rope to ensure that the fishing line stops when the collecting ball has just touched the ground, so as to obtain a very high success rate.

Downing's team has accumulated a wealth of experience in the development of longline, and this time the ant longline project was naturally designed by these experienced engineers. The solution is complex and expensive, but it guarantees automation and efficiency.

Manaus, which has been robbed of rubber business by Southeast Asia, has ushered in one of the most important economic industries, it will be the center of the ant economy, and poultry farming will become the main industry of Manaus. No other country has the poultry farming industry at such low costs as Manaus. It was a surprise that Vale's first lucrative business was aquaculture.

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