I had several new ideas concerning this last night. Note that I've revised the terminology as outlined here, so the yneberries are now "oozberries" and the ynts "roozters".
As suggested previously, there could be a particular species of bird which is somehow capable of eating the berries, and thus serves as the seed distributor. This bird would be called the "gooz", to stick with the naming scheme. Given that, I might as well make it more or less goose-like all the way, rather than some version of hummingbird, which is what I had originally in mind. Like geese, goozes would be migratory and therefore capable of spreading the briars over considerable distances.
The reason they don't get attacked by the roozter ants could be that they produce a natural ant-repellent - as part of their preen oil, presumably. They could have evolved this in order to be able to eat the berries, or conversely the roozters could have evolved to be repelled by gooz secretions in order to allow them to act as seed distributors, which is to the roozters benefit, or a combination of both. Further, this offers the Altlings a simple way to harvest some of the fresh berries: All they need do is hunt a gooz and turn its plumage into a pair of gloves. Or, slightly more elaborate and probably more practical, hunt a gooz, extract the pure oil from the gland, and then use that to impregnate leather gloves or even to simply make some sort of roozter-repellent substance that can be applied to the skin. I do like the feather-gloves as a visual, though.
As mentioned here (see "Early Harrow"), one of the other agricultural plants sheds its dandelion-like seeds near the end of the berry season, much of which gets caught up in the briars. I originally came up with that idea partly to give the roozters something to cushion the ground to prevent the berries from splitting open when dropped, as suggested in post #14 here. But that's off the table now, as they are supposed to split open and ooze jooz, which the roozters can drink on the spot. Instead, I thought of two other uses for the cane-seed "snow".
Firstly, the roozters could use the parachutes to disperse the ooz seeds. They'd have to remove the cane-seed itself from its parachute, and then "manually" attach an ooz-seed in its place. This would require some sort of adhesive, but considering that spiders can make silk and wasps can make something like paper-mache for nest-building, that doesn't seem implausible at all. Then, they'd simply carry the contraption to the highest place they can reach and let the wind carry it off.
Secondly, they could use this stuff as thermal cladding for their nests, and especially for the big chambers in which the larder specimens spend the winter.
This, in turn, could be employed by the Altlings to locate those chambers later on. All that would be required for that would be to scent-mark the material with something that the myrrhatels (the domesticated badgers) are strongly receptive to, and then those ought to be able to dig an access tunnel in just the right place.
Finally, couldn't they use the mammoths as living pumps to extract the repletes? I imagine even proboscids might not be too fond of sticking their trunks into an ant nest and snorting a bunch of insects up their noses, but there could be some sort of trunk-extension for that. Like, a tube with something like mosquito netting across the middle. Insert the trunk into one end, shove the other into the nest, have the mammoth suck a load of larders into the far end, pull the tube out, stick it in a barrel, make the mammoth release the larders, and you've got a bucket full of the critters extracted with relatively little effort and fuss. It seems a bit silly, admittedly, but seeing what sort of things real elephants can do with their trunks, I can't find anything really implausible in the scheme. Opinions?
Soon the Cold One took flight, yielded Goddess and field to the victor: The Lord of the Light.
I had several new ideas concerning this last night. Note that I've revised the terminology as outlined here
, so the yneberries are now "oozberries" and the ynts "roozters".
- As suggested previously, there could be a particular species of bird which is somehow capable of eating the berries, and thus serves as the seed distributor. This bird would be called the "gooz", to stick with the naming scheme. Given that, I might as well make it more or less goose-like all the way, rather than some version of hummingbird, which is what I had originally in mind. Like geese, goozes would be migratory and therefore capable of spreading the briars over considerable distances.
- The reason they don't get attacked by the roozter ants could be that they produce a natural ant-repellent - as part of their preen oil
, presumably. They could have evolved this in order to be able to eat the berries, or conversely the roozters could have evolved to be repelled by gooz secretions in order to allow them to act as seed distributors, which is to the roozters benefit, or a combination of both. Further, this offers the Altlings a simple way to harvest some of the fresh berries: All they need do is hunt a gooz and turn its plumage into a pair of gloves. Or, slightly more elaborate and probably more practical, hunt a gooz, extract the pure oil from the gland, and then use that to impregnate leather gloves or even to simply make some sort of roozter-repellent substance that can be applied to the skin. I do like the feather-gloves as a visual, though. 
- As mentioned here
(see "Early Harrow"), one of the other agricultural plants sheds its dandelion-like seeds near the end of the berry season, much of which gets caught up in the briars. I originally came up with that idea partly to give the roozters something to cushion the ground to prevent the berries from splitting open when dropped, as suggested in post #14 here. But that's off the table now, as they are supposed to split open and ooze jooz, which the roozters can drink on the spot. Instead, I thought of two other uses for the cane-seed "snow".
- Firstly, the roozters could use the parachutes to disperse the ooz seeds. They'd have to remove the cane-seed itself from its parachute, and then "manually" attach an ooz-seed in its place. This would require some sort of adhesive, but considering that spiders can make silk and wasps can make something like paper-mache for nest-building, that doesn't seem implausible at all. Then, they'd simply carry the contraption to the highest place they can reach and let the wind carry it off.
- Secondly, they could use this stuff as thermal cladding for their nests, and especially for the big chambers in which the larder specimens spend the winter.
- This, in turn, could be employed by the Altlings to locate those chambers later on. All that would be required for that would be to scent-mark the material with something that the myrrhatels (the domesticated badgers) are strongly receptive to, and then those ought to be able to dig an access tunnel in just the right place.
- Finally, couldn't they use the mammoths as living pumps to extract the repletes? I imagine even proboscids might not be too fond of sticking their trunks into an ant nest and snorting a bunch of insects up their noses, but there could be some sort of trunk-extension for that. Like, a tube with something like mosquito netting across the middle. Insert the trunk into one end, shove the other into the nest, have the mammoth suck a load of larders into the far end, pull the tube out, stick it in a barrel, make the mammoth release the larders, and you've got a bucket full of the critters extracted with relatively little effort and fuss. It seems a bit silly, admittedly, but seeing what sort of things real elephants can do with their trunks, I can't find anything really implausible in the scheme. Opinions?
Soon the Cold One took flight, yielded Goddess and field to the victor: The Lord of the Light.