A few months ago, the military would not have dared to withdraw its troops even if it had given them eight courages. However, since Beidu issued an order to stop encircling and suppressing giant ants, the situation in the ant-occupied areas has been very stable, which has given the military enough
Confidence.
It is approaching the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the temperature in the north has dropped significantly. The night temperature is only a few degrees above zero. In a month and a half, the night temperature will fall below the freezing line.
Cold is an invisible killer of insects. Both giant ants and giant locusts will lose their basis for survival and will never be able to expand as large as in midsummer.
"Really can't survive the winter?" Ye Han expressed doubts about the low-temperature insecticide theory, "Insects can grow as big as a car. What if they mutate into some weird structure that can withstand the low temperature in winter?"
"That's impossible." Xu Ruolin said, "This result was researched by Beidu. It said that it takes a lot of time for organisms to adapt to the environment. The body structure of insects is not cold-resistant. Not even a thousand or eight hundred years can't adapt to low temperatures... I heard
He was not very careful, is that what he said at the time?"
Lu Qingzhi and Gao Bo nodded together, but Long Jianguo was the only one who had no expression on his face, not knowing what he was thinking.
Xu Ruolin, who was sure of the harvest, continued: "Insects must either hibernate or die and spend the winter as eggs. There is no third option."
Ye Han asked in confusion: "Did you hear it? Where did you hear it?"
"The document sent above was read over the radio." Xu Ruolin's eyes fell on Long Jianguo, "Batalion Commander?"
Long Jianguo nodded: "The documents are in the command car. I want to see them and take them myself."
Ye Han nodded quickly: "Okay, I'll go now!"
"Go away!" Long Jianguo kicked him angrily.
Ye Han ran away laughing, and quickly got into the command vehicle. The communications soldier on duty asked Ye Han why he was here, and immediately found a document from a small number of documents. He turned to the last few pages and handed it to Ye Han: "This is it!
"
Ye Han couldn't help but rolled his eyes. The so-called report was actually an attachment to a document!
Taking the document from the communications soldier, the title of the attachment was very inconspicuous: The Impact of Temperature on Insect Disasters.
His eyes skipped the first paragraph, which was full of clichés, and fell directly on the text. He sat in the command car and read it carefully.
The main idea of the text is that the scientific research department in Beidu has long begun to pay attention to the physiological conditions of giant insects. Through rigorous experiments, the research department came to a conclusion: Although the giant insects have changed greatly in size, the changes in body structure have been very small, and they are still a kind of
Cold-blooded animals are extremely dependent on environmental temperature.
In other words, when the temperature is high, the activity is strong, but when the temperature is low, the activity is less or even inactive.
According to experimental results, when the temperature drops to about 7 degrees above zero, the activity ability of giant ants will significantly decrease. They will completely stop activity around 4 degrees above zero and quickly enter a state of hibernation.
Under normal circumstances, hibernating organisms have a series of physiological abilities to resist cold, such as slowed heartbeat, lowered body temperature, reduced activity or even inactivity, plus long periods of sleep.
At present, the insect plague in the north is mainly caused by three giant insects: giant ants, giant locusts and giant cockroaches.
The report classifies and explains three typical giant insects.
The first is giant ants. The habits of giant ants are similar to ants. Experiments have found that the original physiological structure of giant ants can no longer adapt to external climate changes. Due to the substantial increase in body size, the thickened chitin carapace can play a certain role in insulation.
, so giant ants are still active at around 7 degrees Celsius, while ordinary ants will enter hibernation when the temperature falls below 10 degrees.
From this aspect, the giant size of ants does bring certain advantages. However, the experiment also found that if the temperature in the simulated environment is lowered to below zero, and then raised to above zero for a period of time, the hibernating giant ants will only
A quarter of them can still wake up. If the freezing time is extended, the number of revived giant ants will decrease further!
When Ye Han saw this, he suddenly thought of the famous liquid nitrogen freezing goldfish experiment. Although he didn't understand the principle of this experiment, he had heard a saying that the reason why goldfish could revive after being frozen in liquid nitrogen was because the goldfish could revive.
The size is very small, and the goldfish can be frozen quickly at low temperatures. The water in the goldfish's body has no time to crystallize, and the cell structure will not be destroyed.
However, humans and other large animals are too large, and low temperature cannot quickly reduce the temperature inside the body. The temperature difference between the inside and outside of the body is too large, and the result is that the water in the cells freezes.
It is common knowledge that water will increase in volume when it freezes. Once the water in a cell freezes, it will burst the cell wall, causing irreversible damage.
The result is that people are directly frozen to death, instead of being thrown into the water and able to survive like goldfish.
Some people may say that if you throw someone into the water, even if you can survive, you will be drowned by the water.
Ye Han completely disagrees with this point, because when he was very young, he saw a piece of news about mice moving freely in liquids. Even if it still cannot reach the level of human application, it will definitely be possible to achieve human application in the near future.
Liquid breathing.
The key issue lies in the freezing process, not the method of recovery.
Withdrawing his divergent thoughts, Ye Han returned his attention to the report.
The report mentioned that ants do not hibernate until spring. Instead, they stay in their holes, reduce activity, and eat stored food for the winter.
Experts from Beidu believe that the ecological environment in the north has been severely damaged by insect plagues, and the prey of giant ants is extremely rare. They doubt whether the giant ants can obtain enough food in the autumn, and speculate that the ant colonies are likely to suffer from lack of food during the long winter.
food and become extinct.
Based on the above two points, experts from Beidu believe that as long as we wait until winter arrives, the giant ant problem will be completely eradicated.
Ye Han was not stupid, so he immediately thought that the opinions in this report might be the key factor for the military to evacuate the area occupied by the ants. Without the conclusions of this report, the yibei area would definitely still be under the strict supervision of the military.
, there will definitely be an ant colony out of control incident.
The military must be regretting the loss of control of the ant colony. Anyone who uses this report as a basis for the decision to withdraw troops, or even the person who wrote the report, will inevitably become a victim of the loss of control of the ant colony.
They are the people directly responsible. If these people don’t take the blame, who will?
As for giant locusts, they have no ability to hibernate at all. The drop in temperature in the north is the direct cause of the locust swarms migrating south.
If the giant locusts cannot cross thousands of kilometers and successfully reach the warm south before the arrival of winter, disaster awaits them.
That is to say, as soon as winter enters, or even late autumn, the prosperous insect swarms in the north will enter a dormant period!
However, the length of the ovipositor of ordinary locusts can reach twice the body length. In other words, a five-centimeter-long locust can lay eggs ten centimeters deep underground!
