Next to the cashew nut tree, which is flowering and with and with fruits in their stage, the red ants have made their nest. The red ants feed from the flowers and the cashew nut, when it is in its formative stage. I noticed this in the previous years also. The ant nests are seen near to the cashew tree in the season when cashew tree flowers.
Even the ants know a lot about survival skills!
I have often wondered about the wild animals coming to human habituated areas to find food, and causing damage to harvest ready fields and harm to human beings! Does it not give us a message worth thinking about seriously! The animals are pushed to be aggressive as they are bereft of their habitat in the forests, which are now getting used for building facilities for humans.
The question of the environmentalists, 'Are we unmindful of the needs of wild animals' is a resounding question. Humans create edifices for their existential pursuit and leave the environment depleted of the resources of the tribal communities and wild animals.
This is not a healthy development but exploitation to purse selfish interests at the cost of harming wild life! If the suspicion is true that the ongoing conflict in Manipur is to vacate the hills where one community lives, is for using the hills for mining, then it does not speak well about the policy makers! It is thought that a few private companies are waiting in the wings to buy the land for minig!
Some countries like Australia make an effort to confess to the native occupants of the land, for wrongful possession of their land for development, depriving them of their habits and patterns. In India, the tribal communities are feeling displaced from the forests, which have been their home for generations!
The ants build their nest where there are cashew fruits.
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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