When Alija trudged into the Ivory Citadel that day, it was immediately obvious to the ants that he was in a frail state. A squad of 500 straight away scuttled forward to greet him and offer assistance, as they did with every dinosaur patient, and Alija duly opened his mouth and pointed inside with his claw. It was an unnecessary gesture, for dinosaurs only ever turned up there to get their teeth worked on. But the lead ant doctor, an ant by the name of Avi, who would later become the father of ant internal medicine, noticed that Alija was not actually pointing to his teeth but to somewhere further down – to his throat. Next, the dinosaur pointed to his stomach, grimaced to show that it hurt, and pointed to his throat again. There was no mistaking his meaning: he was asking the ants to examine his stomach.

So Dr Avi led a team of several dozen ants to conduct the first ever internal examination of a consenting dinosaur. The diagnostic team entered Alija’s stomach by way of his oesophagus and quickly discovered a lesion in the stomach wall. Major medical intervention was required, but Dr Avi knew that with the limited antpower currently available to him, this was not possible. He would need a great deal of assistance. When he emerged from the dinosaur’s mouth, he made an emergency appointment with the mayor of the Ivory Citadel. At the meeting, he explained the situation and requested an additional 50,000 ants as well as three kilograms each of anaesthetic and anti-inflammatory drugs.

The mayor waved her antennae angrily. ‘Are you crazy, Doctor? We have a full schedule of dinosaur patients today. If we reassign that many ants to your team, we’ll have to delay service to nearly sixty dinosaurs. Not to mention that that much medicine would be enough for a hundred treatments. That Hadrosaurus is sickly. He’s too weak to find bones and meat. How will he pay for this super-treatment?’

‘You must take the long view, Madam Mayor,’ Dr Avi replied. ‘If this intervention is successful, we ants will no longer be restricted to treating only dental problems – we’ll be able to cure almost any disease. Our business with the dinosaurs will increase tenfold, a hundredfold. We’ll earn more bones and meat than we can count, and your city will grow prodigiously.’

The mayor was persuaded and she gave Avi the ants, drugs and authority he had asked for. A great contingent of 50,000 ants was soon assembled, and two piles of drugs were hauled in. The sick Hadrosaurus lay flat on the ground as the army of ants streamed into his open mouth in continuous, unbroken columns, each ant carrying a tiny backpack filled with drugs. Hundreds of giant dinosaurs gathered around in a circle, gawping at this grand undertaking.

‘I can’t believe that idiot’s letting all those bugs crawl right into his stomach,’ grumbled a Tarbosaurus.