The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 154 Flying Artillery (2)

For this pair of wings, Lin Yi designed a towering thoracic segment and a special back plate structure for the new grade to accommodate a large number of muscles and promote the flapping of the hind wings and the angle adjustment of the forewings.

Due to the existence of the inner shell, the structure of the flight muscles is still a mixture of hydraulic muscles and fibrous muscles. It is different from direct flight muscles and indirect flight muscles, so naturally there are not so many weird problems.

After solving the wings and flight muscles, it’s time to move on to the overall structural layout and the most important part of mounting ammunition.

However, for this part of the structural design, Lin Yi has already selected the reference object and is only waiting for the final implementation.

But unexpectedly, in the end, Lin Yi's reference object was not the insects or vertebrates that were good at flying in later generations, but a somewhat unexpected species - an ant!

It sounds ridiculous to use ants with no wings in the worker ant class and poor flying ability in the breeding ant class as the reference object for flight class. However, what Lin Yi wants to refer to is not ordinary ants.

The reference object of the new class is an arboreal ant species called the Armed Stinger Ant - well, this name makes it difficult to assume the gender of all members of this species. They are probably armed helicopters.

Remove the name. Their appearance is also very special. The entire body is relatively flat, and the head is generally triangular, or arrow-shaped or boomerang-shaped to be precise, with a pair of long and straight tong-like trap jaws.

Their flat body gives them a special ability - as an arboreal species, when they lose their footing and fall from a twig, they will spread out their six limbs to balance their body, and use the lift structure brought by their flat body to briefly remain in the air. gliding.

Moreover, they will also use the swing of their six limbs to adjust their orientation to ensure that they land on other branches at lower locations instead of plunging into dangerous environments far away from their nests.

Although this is partly due to its small size and greater impact on air buoyancy, it is undeniable that the armed poisonous needle ant does have a certain aerodynamic layout structure, allowing it to successfully glide without wings.

Although other arboreal ant species, such as the black turtle ant, have similar structures, the armed poisonous needle ant is the most ferocious of the ants with similar habits and has the most highly specialized hardware structure.

Their well-developed trap jaw structure and special venom gland secretions that are similar in composition to pesticides allow them to play a local role similar to that of the weaver ants in the Old World. They are the uncrowned kings of the canopy - which is why Lin Yi finally chose this species.

The female reproductive ants of Armed Poisonous Needle Ants are similar in appearance to worker ants, but have developed flight muscles and membrane wings, and have acceptable flying ability. Therefore, the new grade will be developed based on the shape of the female breeding ants of Armed Poisonous Needle Ants. .

Of course, only the head and thoracic segments refer to the armed poisonous needle ant, but starting from the merging of the thoracic and abdominal segments, it looks completely different.

A member of the leaf-cutting ant subfamily of the family Formicidae, the armed venomous needle ant has a slender two-segmented abdominal stalk, or tubercle. This structure allows their stingers to flexibly hit the target, but after their size is enlarged, this structure is no longer suitable.

After the thoracoabdominal segments are merged, there is still a waist segment that is slightly drawn inward, but its structure is completely different from the nodule. To be precise, all the body segments at the rear are not like the adults of any kind of terrestrial insects, but are somewhat similar to shrimps. Tail, or in other words, the most primitive worm form of arthropods.

From the appearance, except for the last segment, which has a pair of earwig tail clips or feather-winged horseshoe crab tail segments, which function as tail wings when necessary, they all show the most basic cylindrical segment shape. The end of the telson is hollow - yes, in the design, the several segments at the end of the abdomen are completely hollow, without any organs inside, and exist entirely as a special chamber.

And this chamber is naturally where the new-level magazine is located!

But unlike the mortar spider, when the mortar spider is in the firing state, like the mortars of later generations, the barrel is raised at an angle of about 45 degrees, which allows the small-level individual as the cannonball to naturally slide down to the ground under the action of gravity. The bottom of the barrel.

However, in the new-grade magazine, due to flight reasons, the aerial bomb must be firmly fixed in the magazine, and then thrown downward when it needs to be launched.

Therefore, the method Lin Yi adopted was to directly let the aerial bombs grow on the bodies of the new grades, so that their flesh and blood could be integrated into one!

However, in order to facilitate the replacement of ammunition types according to mission requirements after "leaving the factory", such as semi-armor-piercing bullets, high-explosive shrapnel and incendiary bombs used by the mortar gun spider, Lin Yi finally installed a newly developed system on the new product. The rear magazine of the stage - that is, the modular system.

The new modular design concept has finally been reflected in this new grade - the internal end of the magazine has a special locking structure, and the specially designed "aerial bomb" can be mounted on it.

Once hooked up, the small-level individual as the aerial bomb will be connected to the entire circulatory system of the large-level host as the aerial bomb through a special structure, just like the two male anglerfish in later generations, completely becoming a parasitic part of the host.

But this process is not irreversible - once the target is found, the large-scale individual as the host will cut off the connection, disconnect the special locking structure at the same time, and throw the projectile down.

Of course, the aerial bombs are the same as the large-caliber artillery shells fired by the mortar spiders. They have the same traditional art skill - Taijun's biological guidance, and can accurately hit fixed or moving targets without worrying about accuracy.

However, in order to further enhance the lethality and further ensure accuracy, the new level of bomb delivery is still based on dive bombing, that is, diving downward at a large angle to the target's head to release the bomb, and then quickly pulling up.

In order to ensure that the small-grade individuals used as aerial bombs can be easily thrown out during dive bombing, it is time for the relatively primitive body segment structure and the overall worm-shaped rear abdominal structure to come into play.

The new grade's rear abdomen has a large amount of hydraulic-fiber mixed muscle tissue, which allows the entire abdomen to bend under the body and arch the body like a shrimp.

At this time, the magazine opening at the end of the abdomen is directly facing the ground. After disconnecting the flesh and blood connection and releasing the locking structure, the aerial bomb in the magazine can be easily dropped and hit on the target's head.

Coupled with some miscellaneous detailed modifications, the biological dive bomber is roughly completed. However, these alone are not enough.

The highly specialized characteristics of the new levels determine that they cannot survive independently without leaving the nest. Just like in the air force system of later generations, apart from the personnel and equipment that actually take off for combat, the ground support work behind the scenes is also equally important.

(End of this chapter)