‘So what?’ a Tyrannosaurus snapped back. ‘We already allow them into our mouths, don’t we?’

‘Dental hygiene is one thing, but when it comes to matters of the stomach, well, that’s a whole different ocean of fish,’ the Tarbosaurus replied. ‘Over my dead body—’

‘But what if your body was very nearly dead – like with this poor Hadrosaurus here,’ a squat Stegosaurus behind them interjected, craning her neck to see. ‘If the ants really can cure him—’

‘You mark my words, if we let them into our stomachs now, before we can so much as scratch an itch, they’ll be crawling into our noses, ears, eyes – into our brains, even. And who can anticipate what might happen then.’ The Tarbosaurus glared at the Stegosaurus. ‘Not in a million years would I countenance that.’

‘A million years, huh?’ said the Tyrannosaurus, stroking his chin. ‘But think how easy life would be if every disease could be cured.’

The other dinosaurs chipped in:

‘Yeah, life would be so easy…’

‘Getting sick is a massive pain…’

‘We could live forever…’

The first stage of the operation required that anaesthetic be administered to the lesion in Alija’s stomach. It had been collected from plants for use during dental procedures, and under the direction of Dr Avi the ants now ferried it into the Hadrosaurus’s stomach. After the area had been numbed, several thousand worker ants began to cut away the diseased tissue. This was a huge project, as the excised gastric tissue had to then be transported out of the dinosaur’s body. Porter ants formed a long black chain, passing little gobbets of flesh from ant to ant, all the way back up the line and onto the ground outside, where the pile of stinky rotten tissue was expanding fast. Once the lesion had been cut out, an anti-inflammatory had to be applied to the wound, which required another great procession into the Hadrosaurus’s stomach.

The entire procedure took three hours and was completed by sundown. When all of the ants had withdrawn, Alija reported that the pain in his stomach had disappeared. Several days later, he made a full recovery.

The news spread like wildfire through the dinosaur world. The number of dinosaurs seeking treatment at the Ivory Citadel increased tenfold, and this brought multitudes of ants flooding into the city in search of work. Thanks to the healthy uptick in business, the ants’ medical technology advanced in leaps and bounds. Now that they had official access to dinosaur bodies, they learnt to treat various diseases of the digestive and respiratory systems; later, their repertoire expanded to include diseases of the circulatory, visual, auditory and nervous systems – systems that required extraordinary levels of expertise to understand and heal. New drugs were being developed all the time, derived from not only plants but also animals and inorganic minerals.