When you find a herd of deer in the wild, perhaps what you find is not a herd of deer, but a group of individuals who happen to get together.
It will hunt its own food, collect resources, breed offspring, and think on its own, but it will not divide labor in detail and assemble into a social whole.
From this perspective, a superorganism, that is, a true social creature, has these three characteristics.
Division of reproductive labor, overlapping generations, and socialized upbringing.
So, why hyper-individualization and what are the benefits?
The answer is resources, namely sustainable development.
The problem lies in the parasites. The group of parasites you see is not a real insect swarm. They are not social. It can be said that they are forced together under the influence of man-made force.
It can even be said that parasites are not real insects and are not social. This highly specialized species is different from any natural species that Meiji has ever seen.
Their species has no future.
You will not see a single wild parasite anywhere in the wild.
The development of their family is deeply bound to the host. When a host dies, it means the destruction of the insect swarm.
Every child of the Aburame clan will acquire parasite eggs when they are young.
The moment a child successfully extracts chakra, it means the rise of a swarm of insects.
Chakra will cause the eggs to hatch, and the adult parasites will crawl out of them.
This means that this kind of insect becomes an adult immediately after birth.
So, here comes the problem.
Who plays the role of breeding.
Adult parasites?
No, adult parasites will only mate and lay eggs. What happens next is none of their business. This is the result of high specialization after co-evolution.
The host plays the role of mother who raises the bugs to adulthood, even though the bugs do not have larvae and develop directly into adults in the eggs.
But the chakra input is the nourishment for the growth of the larvae.
This also means that once separated from the host, the parasite loses the ability to reproduce, and the only outcome is destruction.
Figuratively speaking, parasitic bugs are a group of professional samurai who are completely out of work. In addition to playing, they usually only eat and mate.
Generally speaking, if you don't work, if you work, you will definitely die.
This species has no future in the wild nature.
This also means that the size of the insect swarm is actually directly proportional to the size of its own chakra.
To raise it will consume food, or chakra.
This also means that the size of the insect swarm is limited, which extremely limits the strength of the Aburame clan.
If she doesn't solve this problem, Meiji knows that she has no future.
In order to support the huge insect swarm that far exceeds this age group, Meiji has ordered the insect swarm to hunt independently.
To offset part of the chakra consumption.
When it can no longer withstand the consumption, in order to prevent environmental damage, Meiji will let some insect swarms commit suicide on the spot, and the corpses will be collected as the insect swarm's food reserve.
But doing this all the time is not a good idea.
Therefore, resources and sustainable development are huge issues.
In addition, I got parasitic worms when I was more than four years old. After more than a year of use experience, parasitic worms have also exposed many other problems.
It can be said that the parasitic bug is the laziest beetle that Mei Ji has ever seen. If there is no special instruction, the parasitic bug will dare to lie down and eat Mei Ji's chakra all the time. It is more parasitic than a parasite.
Among them, the biggest problem is execution.
There is no doubt that the parasite can faithfully execute Meiji's instructions, although there will be some minor problems in execution.
For example, building a nest.
Too complex instructions cannot be executed perfectly and can only be carried out in a general direction. Not to mention Mei Ji, this is the case for all insects of the same species.
This is a matter of IQ. Compared to her peers, Meiji is advantageous in that she can perform real-time micro-control, controlling the movements of the insect swarm as delicately as her hands and feet.
This allows the insect swarm to complete extremely complex instructions.
And therein lies the problem.
When the crypt was first dug, Mei Ji was not aware of it, and a large group of insects suffocated and died in the excavated crypt due to ventilation problems.
Therefore, once the parasite swarm is allowed to move freely, it will change from having brains to being brainless.
What we can do is not to rely on God's will, but to stay in bed.
Once the current task is over, they don't know what to do and fall into a state of confusion. They instinctively lie down on standby. If there is food, they will lie on it. If there is nothing to eat, they will instinctively look for food when they are really hungry.
Not to mention hunting in groups, sometimes whether you can find something to eat depends on God's face.
Even mating and even egg-laying are all carried out under the leadership of the Aburame clan.
To a certain extent, the parasites were perfectly trained by the Aburame clan.
It is an obedient biological weapon.
But if you are too obedient, you will lose your independence, so you have to rely on the oil girl clan for everything, and you have to put food in your mouth. Independent development is nothing.
And it is impossible for Meiji to keep an eye on these bugs all the time and instruct them how they should divide labor and cooperate, how they should farm and breed, and how they should have children.
And if you teach them, it’s a fool’s errand. They have no memory at all.
There are no solutions, and superorganism is one of them.
For example, ants, their behavior is engraved on the expression of genes.
What Meiji has to do is to copy this gene from the ants and engrave it into the genes of the parasites.
That is, the transcription of a program or behavioral algorithm.
The algorithm of ants determines that every ant is needed when it is born. It acts according to the algorithm of genes as soon as it is born. There is no need for leaders or meetings to discuss. It performs its own work according to the behavioral algorithm and each performs its duties.
Each ant will act according to the best behavior algorithm trained by its ancestors through hundreds of millions of years of big data evolution.
Therefore, after extensive observation, Meiji selected a local kind of cool-looking ant.
Named the unique giant-headed leafcutter ant by Meiji.
He is the overlord of the ant colony in Konoha.
They are characterized by their large heads. Although they are called leafcutter ants, they do not cut leaves, but can grow mushrooms. They are not considered army ants themselves. They will use the exit of the nest as a stronghold and march around to sweep away the ants.
The size difference between individuals is huge, the largest individual is at least five hundred times larger than the smallest, so it is called completely different, that is, they are all different.
When traveling, the giant ants are riding on small ants, which looks like a team of pacifists.
The advantage of this is that it saves energy consumption during marching.
Not only is the combat capability outstanding in all aspects.
The most important thing is that this kind of ant is not aggressive. Although it is super strong, it is very cautious.
The previously cultivated honeypot worms can be said to have failed, but not completely.
The original intention is to transform a bug that can independently produce chakra and store it. However, this small bug is not mentally qualified for the synthesis of chakra. However, it can store chakra. Although the amount is small, it can be used as a supplement to chakra.
The means are sufficient.
This can be regarded as a solution to the expansion of insect colonies, but the solution to the fundamental problem depends on super-individualization, that is, sustainable development.
At present, a new kind of queen needs to be cultivated to abandon the low egg-laying efficiency and method of parasitic insects.
Change it to one fertilization, lifetime use, and a daily production of thousands.
What needs to be done is still a long and big project.
This is just the beginning. Genes can be plundered and copied, which means that in this ninja world, the blood inheritance limit is also a harvestable resource for Miji.
Meiji took down several experimental bottles, which were all filled with modified insect eggs.
Among them, most of the eggs are dead and died due to gene collapse in the initial stage of genetic recombination.
As the master of the insect swarm, Mei Ji can sense their life, death and health status, which saves Mei Ji a lot of trouble in observation.
And this is not the first batch of experimental subjects, nor is it the last batch.
Such results are expected.
Mei Ji does not have the means to independently manipulate genes for gene regulation, and does not even have equipment such as a microscope. She can only use rough transcription through chakra, and the next thing is left to natural selection.
That is to say, look at the face.
Therefore, even if the insect eggs survive the initial stage without collapsing, they cannot be said to be successful. Most of them are deformed, and some that are not so deformed are far from Meiji's expectations.
There is only one way, continuous cultivation.
Until success.
Once she succeeds a little bit, Mei Ji can record the expression template of this gene and start manufacturing it.
Therefore, we can continue to cultivate and select the best on this basis to achieve the ideal expected value.
It is a very time-consuming project.
"They really all have their own characteristics."
To put it simply, cross-species gene transplantation is performed first, then gene aggregation molecular breeding is performed, and then group selection is carried out.
Some eggs did not turn into adults under the catalysis of chakra. The genetic recombination caused them to lose the basic ability of parasitic insects and quickly mature into adults.
And some of the ones that climbed out have their own characteristics.
Some of the deformed children with missing arms and legs were selected and destroyed on the spot, and the remaining ones were kept and observed for a period of time before deciding whether to go or stay. At the same time, a batch of new eggs were cultivated.
Meiji continued her work.
After repeating this, throw the selected experimental body into the constructed insect nest ecosystem and let it develop on its own.