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A contemporary duck farmer in China leads his charges along a busy street.
Zhu Yigui was a Fujianese duck farmer who lived in Formosa (now Taiwan) during the 18th century. He was said to command his ducks with martial precision: according to legend, he even trained his ducks to march in military formations like soldiers (although mother ducks have long mastered the same feat with their ducklings–so perhaps Zhu’s soldierly duck-training prowess was less illustrious than legend would make it seem). In 1721 an earthquake rocked the island and caused extensive damage. Some people lost everything. The imperial prefect of Formosa was not interested in hearing excuses and levied punitive taxes on the peasantry—even though smallholders were trying to cope with disastrous losses from the earthquake.
Unable to put up with this abuse from the incompetent Qing authorities, the people rose in rebellion. When they were looking for a leader they remembered the duck-raising prowess of Zhu Yigui who thus became a general. On the 19th of April of 1721 he attacked and captured the city of Gangshan. Soon other rebel factions joined the rebellion, as did the oft-abused aboriginal people of Formosa. Zhu Yigui was given the sobriquet “Mother Duck King.” His forces went on to capture Tainan, the island’s capital without even fighting.
Unfortunately, Zhu’s mastery over ducks did not adequately prepare him for dealing with rebels. He quarreled with his fellow rebel captains just as the Machu relief army was landing on Formosa. The rebels fell apart in pitched battle with professional soldiers and Zhu Yigui was captured and executed. Because of these troubling events duck farming was prohibited in Central Taiwan for many years. Still, whenever one compiles a list of illustrious duck-breeders from the Qing dynasty, Zhu’s name is certainly on the list!
Driver Ants
One of the strangest and most alarming creatures on the planet is the driver ant. Driver ants belong to the genus Dorylus which is comprised of about 60 species. In the larger Dorylus species, each worker ant is only half a centimeter long. The soldier ants which guard the hive are a mere 1.5 centimeters. Males, which can fly, are 3 centimeters long and the queen, the largest of the ants, is from 5 to 8 centimeters long. These are not the sort of sizes that allow one to play professional football, so what makes Dorsylus ants so fearsome? Well, there are lots of them. Driver ants form the largest colonies of all the social insects. They live in hives numbering more than 20 million individuals, all born by one single queen.
When marching or foraging, these hives can overrun and overpower much larger animals and generally everything that can do so gets out of their way (including mighty elephants).
Driver ant head: close-up (Dorylus nigricans)
Driver ants are usually found in the tropical forests of West Africa (although some species range into tropical Asia). Although capable of stinging, the ants rarely do so. They prefer to use their powerful sharpened mandibles to shear apart prey. Not only are these mandibles powerful the pliers-like pincers lock into a death grip if the ant itself is killed (or even beheaded).
Male Driver Ant ("Sausage Fly")
Male driver ants fly away from the colony very soon after birth. If a colony of foraging driver ants comes across a male ant they rip off his wings and take him to mate with a virgin queen (after which he dies). The queen ant then lays 1 to 2 million eggs per month for the remainder of her life.
All driver ants are blind, but they have an acute sense of touch and smell. Larger columns follow scent trails laid down by scouts. The ants eat any animal life they can get their mandibles on (although the staple of their diet is apparently worms).
Close-up of the enormous queen of an army ant (Dorylus anomma nigricans) colony being protected and tended to by worker and soldier ants during migration of the colony.
When driver ants have stripped the animal life from a particular section of the forest they nomadically pull up stakes and move on en masse. Developing larvae are carried in temporary nests made up of the living bodies of worker ants. Foraging columns or hives on the move are dangerous. While healthy animals can escape, injured or trapped animals can be killed by the ants which enter the mouths and nostrils of victims. One shudders to think of the bad ends which have befallen people who were wounded, bound, or seriously drunk when driver ants were passing through. Farmers however have a different relationship with the ants which can clear entire fields of all agricultural pests in an afternoon.
ferrebeekeeper 