Chapter 7
Feeding And Hunting
Each living being uses different methods to satisfy
its needs for food. In this chapter, you are going to read about the
tactics used by ants when looking for food, about their communications
and the competition among them to get to the food. All the tactics tried
by such a small creature to obtain its food shows, as in previous chapters,
the greatness, magnificence and power of Allah, the "Supreme Possessor
of Intelligence" Who has created them.
How is a "family" with a population in hundreds of thousands fed?
One of the most important things needed for survival of the colony is
resolving of the food problem, and each ant in the colony has its share
of this responsibility.
As they do in other aspects of their lives, the ants carry out systematic
work in solving the nutrition problem. Old worker ants are sent out as
foragers to survey the land around the nest to find food resources for
the colony which has a population of hundreds of thousands (sometimes
millions). When forager ants find a food source, they gather their nestmates
around the food in numbers which depend on the size and richness of the
source. Ants solve the food problem by a very strong communication network
and their generosity, which never says "Only me". .
Ants That Feed Each Other
 Ants
of different species try not to get in each other's way while looking for
food. Each one determines a path for itself to get to the food source. If
ants go into another colony's territory by mistake, this becomes a declaration
of war. In such a situation, forager ants come back to the nest right away
and close the nest entrance and all colony members come together to defend
their colonies against danger.
Then, how do the ants feed during this fight, when they have no opportunity
to bring in food?
At this point, a feature of the ants that distinguishes them from other
living beings emerges. During this period when they cannot search for
food, all colony members feed on the food stored in the crops of young
workers.
In fact, this sharing technique is one they use all their
lives, and not only at special times. Ants not only transport the liquid
droplets, but they feed each other mouth to mouth. Once a forager enters
the nest laden with liquid food, she stands still for a period of time,
swinging its head from side to side while waiting for a nestmate to approach;
or else it moves directly toward nestmates and presents them with the
food droplet held between her widely opened mandibles.84
This liquid food exchange, done by regurgitating which provides quick
distribution of the food to the colony is, in fact, quite an impressive
example of sharing. Also husks and seeds brought to the nest are consumed
as well by all of the ants together. Thus, the food requirement of the
whole colony is satisfied without any problems.
This system is one that makes it necessary to admit of the existence
of a supreme designer. It is a reality that a chain of random events cannot
form such a storage system so complex and requiring great sacrifice. What
is more, each ant comes to this world knowing this system. That is, the
necessity to share its food has been ingrained in it before its birth
and not after. Not only has this sense of sacrifice been inspired in it,
but because a special mechanism is needed to present the food it has saved
in its crop, its body structure has been designed to make this sharing
possible. This sharing event realized among ant colonies once again renders
the word "chance" insufficient or even meaningless, due to the sense of
self-sacrifice being much in evidence. As we have emphasized many times
before, the theory of evolution assumes the existence of a full-fledged
competition and life struggle among all living things. Therefore, examples
of self-sacrifice among ant species are acts most difficult to explain.
Ants living under a feeding system based on sharing are proof that they
do not act in the way suggested by the theory of evolution. They are not
engaging in a random "fight for survival" but are rather performing the
duties given to them (according to the Qur'an "revealed to them") and
thus they are able to transform their colonies with hundreds of thousands
or even millions of members into a true civilization.
In the Qur'an, in surat an-Nahl, Allah describes the "revelation" that
makes it obligatory for the animals to perform certain tasks given to
them by Him:
And your Lord revealed to the bee: "Build dwellings
in the mountains and the trees and also in the structures which men erect.
Then eat from every kind of fruit and travel the paths of your Lord, which
have been made easy for you to follow." From inside them comes a drink
of varying colours, containing healing for mankind. There is certainly
a sign in that for people who reflect. (Surat an-Nahl: 68-69)
The Qur'an, of course, does not list the animals' special duties through
Allah's inspiration one by one. The honey bee is just one example. Yet,
when we look at the ant, we can see that this small being, which performs
as perfect tasks as the honey bee, and which is at least as generous,
social and loyal, acts under a similar revelation.
Rational Techniques In Carrying Food
 The
discovery by approximately 8800 known ant species of the food sources they
need, and their carrying them to their homes are done by different methods.
In certain species, ants hunt on their own and carry the food individually.
Yet in others, hunting is done as a group and they carry and defend their
food together.
If the food they find is in suitable dimensions for them, ants usually
carry it alone. If the food is too large for a single ant to carry or
if it is in small piles, all within a particular area, they give out a
poisonous hormone to prevent others from coming into the territory. Then
they go to call other workers, large and small, to carry the food.
The perfect division of labour governing the lives of ants is observed
here also. Large ants tear up the food and defend it against strangers,
while smaller ones take care of carrying the pieces home. A worker lifts
the food with its mandible and keeps it in front of it while returning
home. When there is a group, the substance they can carry becomes even
larger. They lift the food by using one or two legs. At the same time,
they bite the food, opening their mandibles. Workers apply different techniques,
depending on their positions and their directions. Those in front walk
backwards, pulling the food. Those at the back walk forward, pushing it,
and those at the sides give support. By this technique, it is possible
to carry weights many times greater than what a single ant can carry.
In fact, it has been observed that ants acting in unison can carry a weight
5,000 times as heavy as that carried by a single worker. 100 ants can
carry a large worm at ground level, moving it 0.4 cm per second.
Ants and Odor Trails
Communication by trails (following of odor trails) is a technique that is
commonly used by ants. There are many interesting examples on the subject:
 |
An ant finding a food source leaves
a chemical trail on the ground with the needle at its rear. This trace
helps its nest mates reach the food source. |
An ant species living in American deserts secretes a special odor produced
in its venom sac if it realizes that the dead bug it has found is too
wide or heavy to carry or drag. Its nestmates far away detect the odor
and start moving towards its source. When ants have gathered around the
victim in sufficient numbers to carry it, they start carrying it towards
the nest.
When fire ant workers leave the nest in search of food,
they may follow odor trails for a short while, but they eventually separate
from each other and begin to explore singly. When a fire ant discovers
a food source, it heads home at a slower pace. Her entire body is held
closer to the ground. At frequent intervals, the sting is extruded, and
its tip is drawn lightly over the ground surface, much as a pen is used
to ink a thin line. Thus, it leaves a trail behind it that leads to the
food source.85
Ants Who Serve As Compasses
Food-seeking ants carry out a task in a manner which is very hard to explain.
They go to the food source following a wiggly path, but when they return
home, it is via a short and straight line. Then, how is it that ants that
can see only a few centimetres ahead of themselves, march in such a straight
line?
To find an answer to this question, a researcher called Richard Feynman
placed a clump of sugar at one end of the bathtub, then waited for an
ant to come and find it. As this pioneer ant returned home with news of
the feast, Feynman followed the wiggly path it followed. He then traced
the path of each successive ant to follow the trail. The successive ants,
he found, did not stick exactly to the trail; they did better, cutting
corners until the trail became a straight line.
Later on, inspired by Feynman, a computer scientist,
Alfred Bruckstein, proved mathematically that successive followers really
do make a wiggly line straight. The conclusion he arrived at was the same:
after a certain number of ants, the path length shrinks to some minimum
value: to the shortest possible distance between two points - namely,
a straight line.86
What we talked about above is of course, something which would require
great skill on the part of a human being because he would certainly need
to use a compass, a watch and at times much more complex instruments for
any distance relative to his own dimensions and would have to have a perfect
knowledge of mathematics. In contrast to this, the guide an ant has in
exploring on its own is the sun, while its compass is the position of
branches and other natural landmarks. Later on, ants remember their shapes
and can thus find the shortest route to their nests although they have
never had any prior knowledge of it.
This is very easy to say but very hard to explain! How can these tiny
living beings do such calculations when they have neither a brain nor
the capacity to think and judge?
Imagine that you leave a man in an unfamiliar forest. Even if he knows
the direction to go, he will have a hard time finding his way and will
probably get lost. In the meantime, it will be necessary for him to look
around carefully and think about which would be the best way to go. Yet,
ants act as if they are encoded on the matter of path finding. In the
evening, they can easily find and follow the road they took to find the
food in the morning, even if all the conditions have changed.
The Perfect Hunting Technique
Certain ant species use their teeth to eat spider eggs,
caterpillars, insects and termites. Many ants (for example Dacetine)
specialize in non-winged insects. These insects live in groups in the ground
and in decayed leaves. The bugs have extensions under their bodies in the
form of folded forks. When they rock and get up, this organ throws them
into the air and forward like a miniature kangaroo. Dacetine ants
use their mandibles like an animal-catching trap against this very effective
manoeuvre. When the food-seeking ant receives the odor of an insect with
its antennae, it lies in wait, opening its mandibles 180 degrees. It locks
the small teeth in its mandible by pressing onto its upper palate. It inspects
its surroundings by moving its antennae forward. Then the ant approaches
the insect slowly. When its antennae touch it, the little insect is at a
distance where its apical teeth can reach it. When the ant lowers its palate,
the mandible suddenly snaps shut and the insect is squeezed between the
teeth as if impaled.87
 The
above-mentioned ants never miss their prey, because they have mandibles
with the fastest reflex in the world.
Our speed of blinking the eye is very slow compared
to the biting speed of the trapper ant. While the opening and closing
of the eyelid takes about one third of a second, the mandibles of these
ants (Odontomachus bawi) work almost 100 times faster. The fastest
hit observed took in 0.33 milliseconds.88
 The
mandibular structures of trapper ants are approximately 1.8 milimetre
long. In the interior sections, there is a sac full of air attached to
the trachea. This system ensures exceptionally fast movement of the teeth.
The mandibles act as a miniature mouse trap. When hunting, the mandible
is fully opened and ready to close any time. The biting speed slows down
near the end of the biting process. To prevent the teeth hitting each
other very hard, the mandible movement is slowed down by the special muscle
system.89
It is impossible for such a hunting mechanism to have developed through
evolution. That is, without conscious design and at random.
The only acceptable truth is that the power who has created the ants
with all their miraculous characteristics and perfect life styles is Allah,
Who is sovereign over all of nature and the universe.
84 Bert Hölldobler-Edward O.Wilson,
The Ants, Harvard University Press, 1990, p. 292 
85 Ibid, p. 265.
86 Discover, January 1994, p. 63.
87 Bert Hölldobler-Edward O.Wilson, The Ants, Harvard University
Press, 1990, p. 563
88 Science, Volume.262, 22 Oct 1993.
89 Bert Hölldobler-Edward O.Wilson, The Ants, Harvard University
Press, 1990, p. 565 |
A Definitive Reply To Evolutionist Propaganda
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Darwinism Refuted
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For Men Of Understanding
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Magnificence Everywhere
Miracles In Our Bodies
Miracles Of The Qur’an
Perfected Faith