Лю Цысинь - Of Ants and Dinosaurs

With their powerful mandibles, the ants tore at the pink lizard flesh that was lodged in the ravines between the teeth. As they chewed, they stared up at the enormous white columns rising skywards to either side of them. High above them, on the dinosaur’s palate, another row of gnashers gleamed menacingly in the sunlight, looking for all the world as if they might come chomping down at any moment. But the Tyrannosaurus had already moved its finger to its upper jaw, and an unbroken stream of ants was now scaling those teeth and devouring the meat stuck between them, creating a mirror-image of the scene on its lower jaw.

More than a thousand ants bustled about the dozen or so crevices and soon the scraps of meat had been picked clean. The dinosaur’s dental discomfort had been dealt with! The Tyrannosaurus was not yet evolved enough to say thank you, so it merely let out a long sigh of satisfaction. This sudden hurricane blasted every last ant out of the dinosaur’s mouth and into the air in a cloud of black dust, but because their bodies were incredibly light, they landed unscathed about a metre from the Tyrannosaurus ’s head. With their stomachs now full, the ants pattered back to the entrance of their town, thoroughly sated. The Tyrannosaurus , meanwhile, rolled over into the cool shade and fell into an easy sleep.

And that was that.

As the Earth quietly turned, the sun slid silently towards the west, the cycad shadows lengthened, and butterflies and bugs flitted through the trees. In the distance, the waves of the primeval ocean lapped against the shores of Gondwana.

Unbeknown to all, in this most tranquil of moments the history of the Earth had taken a sharp turn in a new direction.

Two days after the encounter between the ants and the dinosaur, on an equally sweltering afternoon, the inhabitants of the ant town were shaken by another quake. They scampered up to the surface and were met by the towering figure of a Tyrannosaurus , which they straightaway recognised as the same one from before. It had hunkered down and was scouring the ground for something. When it saw the colony, it lifted a claw and jabbed at its teeth. The ants understood immediately, and in a single uniform gesture all 1,000 of them waved their antennae excitedly. The Tyrannosaurus placed one of its forearms flat on the ground and allowed the ants to climb on. And just like that, the scene from two days earlier was replayed: the colony made a meal of the scraps of meat stuck between the dinosaur’s teeth, and the dinosaur was relieved of a minor dental discomfort.

For some time after that, the Tyrannosaurus routinely sought out the town of ants so they could pick its teeth. The ants could feel its footfalls from a kilometre away and were able to accurately distinguish them from those of other dinosaurs. They could even tell from the vibrations in what direction the Tyrannosaurus was moving. If it was heading towards the town, the ants rushed eagerly to the surface, knowing that their food supply for the day was assured. Even though one party in this cooperative endeavour was very large and the members of the other party were undeniably very little, it didn’t take long for the interactions between the two to become well honed.

One day the vibrations coming through the ants’ earthen ceiling sounded different, unfamiliar. When they streamed up into the clearing to investigate, they saw that their partner had brought along three other Tyrannosaurus rex and a Tarbosaurus bataar ! All five dinosaurs gestured at their teeth, requesting the ants’ help. The mayor, recognising that its colony couldn’t possibly undertake such a massive task on its own, sent several drones post-haste to contact other ant towns in the area. Soon, three mighty rivers of ants came pouring in from between the trees, and an army of more than 6,000 ants converged on the clearing. Each dinosaur required the services of 1,000 ants, or, rather, the meat between the teeth of one dinosaur could satisfy 1,000 ants.

The next day, eight dinosaurs came to have their teeth cleaned, and a few days later that number increased to ten. Most of them were exceedingly big carnivores and they had a correspondingly big impact on their surroundings. They trampled the nearby cycads, enlarging the clearing significantly, and at the same time they solved the food problems of a dozen ant towns in the vicinity.

However, the basis for this cooperation between the two species was by no means secure. For a start, compared to the myriad hardships faced by the dinosaurs – hunger when prey was scarce, thirst when water sources had dried up, injuries sustained in fights with their own or other kinds of dinosaur, not to mention a host of fatal diseases – getting meat trapped between their teeth was a mere piddling inconvenience. Quite a few of the dinosaurs who sought out the ants for a teeth-clean did so out of curiosity or for a lark. Equally, once the dry season was over, food would become plentiful again for the ants, and they would no longer need to rely on this unorthodox method of sourcing their daily meat. Attending those terrible banquets in the dinosaurs’ mouths – so very like the gates of hell – was not something most of the ants relished.

It was the arrival of a Tarbosaurus with tooth decay that marked a major step forward in dinosaur–ant cooperation. That afternoon, nine dinosaurs had come to have their teeth cleaned, but this particular Tarbosaurus still seemed restless even after its procedure had been completed; one might even describe its mood as antsy. It held its forearm high to prevent the cleanser ants from leaving and with its other claw gestured insistently at its teeth.

The mayor in charge of that colony led a few dozen ants back into the Tarbosaurus ’s mouth and examined the row of teeth carefully. They quickly discovered several cavities in the smooth enamel walls, each large enough to admit two or three ants side by side. In went the mayor, braving one of the cavities, and several other ants crawled in after it. They scrutinised the walls of the wide passageway. The dinosaur’s teeth were very hard, and anything that could tunnel through material as tough as that was indisputably a digger to rival the ants themselves.

As the ants felt their way forward, a black worm twice their size suddenly erupted from a branch passage, brandishing a fearsome pair of razor-sharp mandibles. With a click, it bit off the mayor’s head. A bundle of other worms then burst out of nowhere, divided the column of ants in the tunnel and launched a ferocious attack against them. The ants were too exhausted to defend themselves and in an instant more than half were slaughtered. Those that did manage to break through the encirclement raced past the black worms but quickly became disoriented in the labyrinthine passages.

Of the original crew, only five ants escaped the cavity, one of whom was carrying the mayor’s head. An ant’s head retains life and consciousness for a relatively long time after being separated from its body, and so, bizarre though it sounds – and how much more bizarre must it have looked – the disembodied mayor’s head was able to address the thousand ants still standing on the dinosaur’s forearm. In a meeting that was clearly far larger than a simple tête-à-tête, the bodiless head explained the situation regarding the Tarbosaurus ’s teeth, issued a final command and only then expired.

A crack team of 200 soldier ants now marched into the dinosaur’s mouth and made straight for that first tooth. Though the soldier ants were skilled at fighting, the black worms were many times their size. Owing to their familiarity with the structure of the tunnels, the worms successfully checked the soldier ants’ attack, killing a dozen of them and forcing the rest to retreat.