Live Wilderness Adventure

Chapter 868 The Myrrh Tree Parasite

The soil clods were thrown and fell to the ground. Countless fine particles were shaken from the dry soil and scattered in the air, raising a thin layer of yellow mist.

Soon, a large hole was dug out, and everyone saw that under the originally inconspicuous small root, there was actually an extremely huge rhizome, flat and oval, resembling an oversized curling jug.

After the hard soil on the surface was dug, the soil below became loose. Seeing this, Bi Fang inserted his dagger into the ground, started digging directly, and finally lifted the entire rhizome out of the ground.

Seeing this, Harley got up and walked forward, lowered his head and sniffed, but he didn't smell what he wanted, so he yelled a few times, and continued to lie down on the ground, turning his head sideways to see what Bi Fang was going to fix.

This thing is quite heavy, and it takes a little effort.

Bi Fang took out a large piece of rhizome, put it on the ground, patted the dust off his hands, then pulled out his dagger, and dug at the root. The hard steel and wood collided with each other, making a dull bang bang sound.

In the dull background, Bi Fang looked up at the drone and said.

I don't know if you've heard of Namibia.

[I have watched the legend of Namibia, and it has a deep influence on the polar bear in it (eating watermelon)]

【Golden compass, right】

[Is there a possibility that the movie is called The Chronicles of Narnia]

[It is not normal to remember wrongly, and human memory is not a reliable thing (it is also strong to be unreasonable)]

Anyway, in my impression, Namibia should be as famous as Kenya. It belongs to the T1 echelon and is as famous as Egypt.

I went to South America from Nemo before, and then when I flew to the Sahara Desert, I overlooked Namibia through the porthole. It is also an amazingly beautiful place.

The desert there is not yellow, but crimson.

The beauty of Namibia can be described as amazing.

Namib Desert, one of the oldest and most beautiful deserts in the world

Because the gravel is rich in iron, after oxidation, the surface of the desert turns red.

Oxide red changes a lot in a day with the change of sunlight angle,

The most amazing thing is that in the morning or evening, when the sun is slanting, the side facing the sun is bright red, and the side behind the sun is as deep as ink.

The two bright colors are extremely shocking and impactful, shocking to the heart and soul, and every arc and every shadow is shining with a breathtaking arc.

It happened to be dusk when Bi Fang flew by. Sitting on the porthole, he overlooked the light and shade cut out by the back of the narrow sand dunes. Half of the sides were red and the other half black. The red was charming and the black was quiet.

The red desert, carved over 80 million years, glows with charming colors and soft lines under the sunlight.

Bi Fang has always regretted that Namibia was not included in his route across the Sahara. Of course, this is not the point he wants to talk about now.

In the Mariental region of Namibia, there lives a primitive tribe called the Bushmen, who have lived on that land for nearly 20,000 years.

Twenty thousand years!

The audience who heard this number were taken aback.

[Is there a mistake, twenty thousand years? 】

[Did Fang Shen make a slip of the tongue, are you sure it wasn't two thousand years? 】

How could I have slipped my tongue on this kind of thing, because of this, the Bushmen are considered to be the oldest indigenous peoples.

Bushmen are also called 'Sang people'. The colonists of Yangguo named them Bushman. Bushman is our Chinese transliteration. It originally means people who live in the bushes. It describes the bushman The living conditions of the Man people have now become a consensus name for them.”

As a special group, they are the most primitive people in Africa. Most live in Namibia, and a small part live in Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Until more than 20 years ago, the Bushmen remained prehistoric and almost unknown.

The first thing I knew about the Bushmen was from an article published in Ugly Magazine. It was probably in the 1990s that a young female scholar came to the tribe where the Bushmen lived in Botswana. Three months.

In an academic paper, she pointed out that the Bushmen lived in poor conditions and were in danger of extinction, and called on the politicians in the ugly country to urge the Botswana government to return the forest they occupied to the Bushmen.

[I guess the old ugly refused (dog head)]

【There is no oil in the ground, how can it be possible to care whether you can live or not】

Seeing the barrage, Bi Fang shook his head: No, Lao Chou really intervened. At that time, Lao Chou wrote a speech directly and eloquently.

Then Bo Guo immediately made a plan to return the jungle to the Bushmen as soon as he heard the old ugly's words.

But not long after the Bushmen happily moved to their original territory, geologists announced that they had discovered diamond deposits that shocked the world in the jungle where they had just moved out.

[! ! ! 】

[So it's not oil, it's diamonds! 】

[My mother, this trick is too damaging]

I don't know if there's any tricks in it, but one of the most concerned topics for travelers on the African continent is the Bushmen.

Under the cutting of the dagger, a large amount of debris fell from the rhizome, exposing the white rhizome tissue, and at the same time, everyone saw the milky white juice bubbling from it, which obviously had sufficient water.

They lived in the most barren and desolate desert area. As the earliest overlords of this land, they lived by hunting and gathering roots, stems and wild fruits of plants like the Paleolithic Age. They had no fixed residence and often followed their energy. Move to the place where the prey is hit.

In order to obtain the water and food needed for survival, the Bushmen often live in groups in summer, and in winter, when water and food cannot meet their needs, they begin to migrate in different directions as a family unit, looking around food and water. But there are also Bushmen who are forced to concentrate around the only water source during the driest part of winter.”

Since they make a living by hunting, they naturally have skills that other peoples do not have in terms of hunting. Similarly, they also have many unique skills in survival.

Like the Sherpas and the Bajau people, the Bushmans are very thirst-tolerant, to a certain degree, and know which plants they can eat and how to replenish water.

Just like the rhizome I'm digging now, it's actually taken from their survival skills. Otherwise, it's impossible for anyone to know from a small whisker emerging from the ground that there are plants that can replenish water underneath.

Bushmen cut up the rhizome and squeezed the juice out of it to drink.

All you have to do is use a stone or a dagger to scrape off the shavings, then grab a handful and squeeze hard, point your thumb to your mouth and wait.

[Humanoid self-propelled encyclopedia, so terrifying! 】

【I often wonder whether a person's brain capacity is limited】

[This sense of erudition is really fascinating]

[I have always felt that boys who know a lot are particularly attractive (shouting)]

Bi Fang wiped his hands, held the large amount of crumbs he had just cut in his hands, raised his head and squeezed them down, a small stream of water flowed down his thumb, and just fell into his mouth.

Cool and delicious, there is a refreshing feeling.

It's much better than the ground water just now, with a special fragrance.

Actually, this water-rich plant is not only known to humans, but also to some animals, so after digging it out, the Bushmen will find an acacia tree nearby, then pull out its branches, cover them near the rhizome, and then dig them out. Bury the rhizome back, and after a while, reuse it when it grows.

Bi Fang looked around and managed to find an acacia tree.

Cut off the branches with a dagger, drag them to the rhizomes, and carefully bury them above the rhizomes.

Acacia is very common in Africa. It is actually a leguminous plant. We also have some relatives of it in China, such as the common acacia tree in parks. We can often see it in botanical gardens, street trees and other scenes.

In addition, the mimosa and the wild acacia on the mountain are also members of the same family as the acacia.

In the south of our country, there will be a kind of shrub-like acacia, and the local people will eat its young leaves as wild vegetables. Do you still remember the stinky vegetables I ate in the Banna rainforest? That is the Acacia family. of.

Of course, they're completely different in Africa.

In order to survive in the harsh local environment. As food for herbivores, they have been struggling with herbivores for millions of years to achieve coexistence.

As the most common type of tree in the savannah, the acacia's method is to grow thorns, and various acacias have a variety of thorns.

Look at this, before the leaves grow up, the thorns grow quite long. The thorns can protect the young leaves first, preventing some animals from climbing trees, and their trunks will also grow many thorns, allowing animals to climb. not come up.

There are also some acacias that don't have such long thorns, but they have a kind of barbed thorn, which is also very powerful.

Bi Fang inserted the branches into the ground, then adjusted the direction, and finally wrapped the entire rhizome.

Probably so.

After doing all this, Bi Fang clapped his hands: Actually, we can't come back again. Let all these things stay here like this. Maybe some tourists who come here will see it and make use of it in the future.

【Animal: You are amazing, you are noble】

[What about my big rhizome, where did the big rhizome go? 】

[Lao Fang: My treasure? I can give you all if you want. Find it out, everything in this world is there! 】

[From then on, the era of the prairie began! 】

Bi Fang took Harley and walked north on the grassland.

As they walked deeper and deeper, the entire grassland seemed to become more and more lively.

All kinds of hunters appear, from insects to poisonous snakes, from animals to birds, which is an eye-opener.

Stones slipped.

A bulging sipe quickly fled away from the tree sticks. Harley next to him was startled and almost jumped into the air, but Bi Fang just took a look and didn't pay much attention. He was three meters away He found the poisonous snake hiding in the rock pile, and deliberately poked the stone to scare it away.

At this time, Bi Fang's attention was more on the big tree in front of him, and his expression was rather surprised.

Myrrh tree.

[Myrrh tree? What the hell? 】

[I guess, it must be poisonous, and the poison is so strong that there is no medicine to cure it, so it is called the myrrh tree! 】

【Fuck, I feel the truth】

No, that's not the case. The myrrh tree itself is not poisonous. On the contrary, its resin has medicinal effects, and it is especially good for relieving toothache.

During the explanation, Bi Fang circled the big tree, lowered his head to scan the ground, and squatted down to dig the soil from time to time, as if he was looking for something.

Myrrh tree has a word 'medicine'. Its English name Myrrh comes from the Hebrew word Murr, which means 'bitterness'. It has a very profound meaning in religious history.

In the Bible, when the three sages of the East found the 6-month-old Jesus under the guidance of the comet, the three gifts they gave to Jesus were gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

[So Lao Fang has a toothache? Or are you ready to spare? 】

【Then what are you looking for? 】

No.

Bi Fang shook his head again, he did not have a strong demand for this great medicine.

The myrrh tree is not poisonous, but there is a kind of beetle that likes to live in it. This kind of beetle is very useful to us. Here it is!

Relying on the terrifying experience of a wilderness traveler, Bi Fang quickly found what he wanted underground near the myrrh tree—the cocoon of a Chrysophyte beetle!

[What the hell? 】

[Fuck, what a big bug]

A poisonous insect.

Bi Fang's explanation is concise and concise.

Bushman hunters in African countries usually use lightweight bows and arrows for hunting activities, which means that when facing larger prey, the lethality of bows and arrows is usually not enough to cause fatal damage to the prey.

However, the Creator created another deadly weapon for the Bushmen in the vast jungle-curare poison.

The bow poison most commonly used by bushman hunters is derived from a unique insect, the phyllid beetle.

And the leaf beetle usually parasitizes in the plants of the myrrh tree!

That's why Bi Fang was surprised and pleasantly surprised when he saw it.

These cocoons are usually hidden underground at a depth of 0.5 to 1 meter from the surface, and each cocoon usually contains a pre-pupated beetle larva in a restrained state, and these larvae can remain dormant in the cocoon for several years.

After obtaining the larvae or pupae of the leaf beetle, Bushman hunters can quickly find the location of the lymph in their blood system, and then squeeze the hemolymph onto the arrow with their hands.

Sometimes the hemolymph of as many as 10 larvae is used to poison a single arrowhead.

Bi Fang held up the cocoon in his hand. The cocoon was so huge that it took up almost half of the entire palm. Through the sunlight, he could clearly see the fat worms inside.

It is worth noting that hunters only apply these poisonous liquids to the front end of the arrow shaft instead of the arrow tip. The purpose is to prevent the arrow tip from accidentally scratching the hunter's body and causing poisoning.

Bi Fang put the cocoon into a small compartment in the backpack to prevent Jerry from stealing bad things. During this period, he pushed Harley away again out of curiosity.

Harley has never been on the grassland for so long, so he is very curious about everything.

The toxic substance contained in the hemolymph of the leaf beetle is a poisonous protein. Everyone knows that as long as it is a protein, the toxicity will gradually disappear over time, but the poison of the leaf beetle is different, and it usually lasts for a year.

There are three main species of Chrysophyllidae beetles that Bushman hunters use to make curare poison.

What's interesting is that these three types of beetles are all parasitized by beetles of the walking family. Hey, what are you talking about? Look at this.

Bi Fang found another one in the ground, lifted it up, pointed to a certain part of the worm in the cocoon, and saw another smaller white worm hanging on it.

When the former cocoons, the latter larvae take the opportunity to attach to the former larvae, and then hibernate in the cocoon, sucking the host's blood and soft body parts, and finally killing the host.

But this is not a bad thing for us. The larvae of the walking beetle are equally poisonous, even more toxic than the larvae of the leaf beetle. Many bushman hunters also prefer to use the larvae of the walking beetle to poison their bows and arrows.

Even if you shoot a large animal like a giraffe, you usually can't stand it. It's just that the shot animal can often run 60 to 100 kilometers injured before finally slowing down and falling to the ground. This is a test for hunters. means of tracking.