The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 30 Picking Up Trash

sea ​​floor.

The thick blood waves gradually dissipated, and the sunlight once again penetrated the water waves and sprinkled on the shallow sea bed. The remains of the soldiers torn in half by the horny beaks of the snails were scattered all over the place, attracting bold benthic garbage-picking creatures to come forward one after another.

Their primitive brains are not strong enough to understand what happened, and they do not know that the first large-scale war in history that may go down in history occurred in this sea area - if there are any records of intelligent creatures in this era.

They only know that eating one more bite of these foods that fall from the sky will increase their chances of survival and reproduction.

But the next second, the light suddenly dimmed, and a shadow was cast, covering Bing Hao's corpse and the creatures picking up the corpse.

The various benthic creatures that were engrossed in eating flesh and blood realized something was wrong. They raised their heads and looked up, only to see a scene they could never understand.

The five pairs of paddling legs of several filter larvae, their fan-shaped flat tails, and the water-jet propulsion system work together to push the floating mother nest, which has multiplied over a period of time and has a main body diameter of five or six meters, slowly forward.

Under the circle of vesicles surrounding the floating mother nest, countless downward-hanging quill-like filter feeding structures are trailed behind, making the mother nest look like a giant jellyfish.

Countless workers are using their chelicerae to clamp on the quill-like structure - to remove plankton in the filtered water, these downward-hanging structures were designed with the mounting of workers in mind.

Arriving above the previous battlefield, the workers released their chelicerae one after another, swung their paddling feet, and swam towards the seabed.

From the perspective of the benthic creatures, this dark figure descended from the sea, waving its pincers, and attacked the corpse.

Even their simple brains realized that something was wrong, and the timid ones immediately ran away, while the ones with thicker armor were not sure whether they were ignorant and fearless or had confidence in their own shells and faced the incoming workers. group.

Although the two pairs of pincers of the worker are not made for fighting and are only used for cutting food, compared with the poor appendages or mouths of the hard-working garbage collectors, they are already regarded as magic weapons.

To deal with these fellow trash pickers, there is no need for soldiers to take action. A large number of workers wielded their pincers and tore trilobites, short-winged horseshoe crabs, armored fish and other bottom-dwelling creatures into pieces one by one.

The floating mother nest slowly fills the vesicle-like structure with water, and the feather-like structure that filters plankton swings, allowing the main body to slowly land towards the seabed.

The worker group of flies picked up the remains of the soldiers with their chelicerae and stuffed them back into the holes on the surface of the mother nest to recover nutrients.

The remaining soldiers used their sickle limbs to clamp the huge body of Zhihejiushi, and slowly dragged it to the seabed, in the direction of the floating mother nest's landing.

More workers used their chelicerae to tear up the corpses, and stuff the torn off helical stone flesh and blood into the holes on the surface of the nest. Let the brood absorb it.

Subsequently, with the supply of food, second-generation soldiers began to pupate in other holes on the surface of the mother nest, trying to make up for the losses in the previous battle as much as possible.

Two more floating brood nests of the same size arrived driven by the filter mother. Under Lin Yi's control, water was poured into the vesicles and they slowly sank. The workers carried on the hanging feather-like structures detached one after another. Join the army of corpse collectors.

More soldiers began to emerge from the holes on the surface of the mother's nest, moving the exoskeleton that had not been completely hardened after pupation, or using the sickle limbs covered with thorns to cut the corpse into pieces that could just fit into the holes on the surface of the mother's nest. The large pieces are then clamped by multiple workers to provide a floating mother nest that sinks to the bottom of the water.    …

While Lin Yi was busy recovering the body, above, in the well-developed compound eyes of Lun Yangmu, he spotted several slowly approaching figures in the distance, which were straight snails.

But it is not an adult, just a sub-adult of five to seven meters. And it does not use its water jet propulsion system at full power to break through the waves as they always do. Instead, it quietly paddles the water with its tentacles and approaches from the seabed. .

They were probably also here to recover the corpses. But even though it was as hidden as possible, its huge body still couldn't escape the compound eyes of the foreign mother.

Just in case, the floating mother nest was also equipped with a few spy workers. Seeing this opportunity, Lin Yi controlled a spy worker to crawl down the drooping feather-like structure on the side of the floating mother nest, and quietly walked toward a few spy workers. He just swam in the direction of the straight spiral stone that came to pick up the corpse.

Under control, the spy worker skillfully lay on the shell of the subadult body of the snail, and used the suction cup structure from the abdomen of the snail to adsorb on the surface of the shell. A pair of huge compound eyes like the eyes of a fly can see clearly ahead without any blind spots.

Seeing that the little Gonghao had successfully attached, the nearby Binghao stepped forward and showed their sickle limbs covered with blades and thorns at the sub-adults. The scorpion's tail is raised above its head, its tail clip is opened and closed, and a sharp tail stinger is revealed at the same time.

Just these few sub-adult Orthophora can hardly compete with the swarms of soldiers, not to mention that they are also here to pick up corpses. At this time, there is a high probability that they will not fight to the death with the soldiers.

Therefore, Lin Yi asked the soldiers to come forward, mostly to drive them away and make them retreat in the face of difficulties. At the same time, he took the attached spy workers back to the floating nest to point him in the direction.

As expected by Lin Yi, several sub-adults did not come up to fight. They glanced twice with their huge eyes, then turned the shell around, started the water jet propulsion system, sprayed out strong water from the funnel, and accelerated away from the scene. Only the soldiers who came forward were left messy in the water.

On the shell, the little spy is tightly sucked to the surface to resist the impact of the water flow.

The second time he committed a crime like this, the spy was still not noticed by the straight horns. The powerful water-jet propulsion system allowed them to fly with great force, ignoring some resistance. This resulted in them not noticing that something was attached to the surface of the shell twice, which increased the resistance in vain.

……

When most of the corpses are recovered, the seawater inside the vesicle-like structure on the side of the floating mother nest is drained from the pipe structure and floats upward. The workers once again use their chelicerae to grasp the filter-feeding structure of the floating mother nest and accompany the mother nest forward.

The filter mother nest waiting in the upper water slowly swung its five pairs of paddling legs, and the water jet propulsion system started to operate, pushing the floating mother nest full of workers forward.

The remaining and newly produced second-generation soldiers nearby gathered into formation again, accompanying the floating mother nest and the filter ocean mother, and floated back towards the direction of the spy workers, that is, the sub-adult orthogonal stone returned to the other side. Swim in the direction of the mother's nest.

Although the scale of the temporarily replenished "fleet" is smaller than before, with only more than a hundred second-generation soldiers, there are not many adults and sub-adults of Orthospermum left in this area. The next battle will only deal with those who take care of the eggs. The juvenile and young bodies are enough.

　Q group number 482446903, welcome all bosses ()

　　
  　
  (End of this chapter)