The Ant and the Mandarin - IELTS Reading Answers With Explanations

Preparing for the IELTS Reading exam can feel overwhelming, especially when you are to crack passages like “The Ant and the Mandarin.” 

This previously asked IELTS reading passage challenges you with its blend of historical context, words, and tricky question types. In this article, we break down “The Ant and the Mandarin” IELTS Reading passage and let you access its answers with easy-to-understand explanations given to boost your accuracy and confidence. 

Whether you are aiming for a band 7, 8, or higher, this blog will help you understand the passage more deeply and approach each question type with a clear strategy.

The question type in this ‘The Ant and the Mandarin’ IELTS Reading Passage includes:

• True/False/Not Given IELTS Reading 
• IELTS Reading Matching Features 

Complete the questions and read the answer key with explanations of “The Ant and the Mandarin.” Ideally, you should not spend more than 20 minutes on this passage.

Reading Passage - The Ant and the Mandarin

In 1476, the farmers of Berne in Switzerland decided there was only one way to rid their fields of the cutworms attacking their crops. They took the pests to court. The worms were tried, found guilty and excommunicated by the arch bishop. In China, farmers had a more practical approach to pest control. Rather than relying on divine intervention, they put their faith in frogs, ducks and ants. Frogs and ducks were encouraged to snap up the pests in the paddies and the occasional plague of locusts. But the notion of biological control began with an ant. More specifically, it started with the predatory yellow citrus ant Oeco-phylla smaragdina, which has been polishing off pests in the orange groves of southern China for at least 1,700 years. The yellow citrus ant is a type of weaver ant, which binds leaves and twigs with silk to form a neat, tent-like nest. In the beginning, farmers made do with the odd ants' nests here and there. But it wasn't long before growing demand led to the development of a thriving trade in nests and a new type of agriculture - ant farming.

For an insect that bites, the yellow citrus ant is remarkably popular. Even by ant standards, Oecophylla smaragdina is a fearsome predator. It's big, runs fast and has a powerful nip - painful to humans but lethal to many of the insects that plague the orange groves of Guangdong and Guangxi in southern China. And for at least 17 centuries, Chinese orange growers have harnessed these six-legged killing machines to keep their fruit groves healthy and productive.

Citrus fruits evolved in the Far East and the Chinese discovered the delights of their flesh early on. As the ancestral home of oranges, lemons and pomelos, China also has the greatest diversity of citrus pests. And the trees that produce the sweetest fruits, the mandarins - or kan - attract a host of plant-eating in­sects, from black ants and sap-sucking mealy bugs to leaf-devouring caterpil­lars. With so many enemies, fruit growers clearly had to have some way of pro­tecting their orchards.

The West did not discover the Chinese orange growers' secret weapon until 1 the early 20th century. At the time, Florida was suffering an epidemic of citrus canker and in 1915 Walter Swingle, a plant physiologist working for the US Department of Agriculture, was sent to China in search of varieties of orange that were resistant to the disease. Swingle spent some time studying the citrus orchards around Guangzhou, and there he came across the story of the culti­vated ant. These ants, he was told, were "grown'' by the people of a small village nearby who sold them to the orange growers by the nestful.

The earliest report of citrus ants at work among the orange trees appeared in a book on tropical and subtropical botany written by Hsi Han in AD 304. "The people of Chiao-Chih sell in their markets ants in bags of rush matting. The nests are like silk. The bags are all attached to twigs and leaves which, with the i ants inside the nests, are for sale. The ants are reddish-yellow in colour, bigger than ordinary ants. In the south, if the kan trees do not have this kind of ant, the fruits will all be damaged by many harmful insects, and not a single fruit will be perfect."

Initially, farmers relied on nests which they collected from the wild or bought in the market where trade in nests was brisk. "It is said that in the south orange trees which are free of ants will have wormy fruits. Therefore, people race to buy nests for their orange trees," wrote Liu Hsun in Strange Things Noted in the South in about 890.

The business guickly became more sophisticated. From the 10th century, coun­try people began to trap ants in artificial nests baited with fat. "Fruit-growing families buy these ants from vendors who make a business of collecting and selling such creatures," wrote Chuang Chi-Yu in 1130. "They trap them by fill­ing hogs' or sheep's bladders with fat and placing them with the cavities open next to the ants' nests. They wait until the ants have migrated into the bladders and take them away. This is known as 'rearing orange ants'." Farmers attached k the bladders to their trees, and in time the ants spread to other trees and built new nests.

By the 17th century, growers were building bamboo walkways between their trees to speed the colonisation of their orchards. The ants ran along these narrow bridges from one tree to another and established nests "by the hundreds of thousands”.

Did it work? The orange growers clearly thought so. One authority, Chhii Ta-Chun, writing in 1700, stressed how important it was to keep the fruit trees free of insect pests, especially caterpillars. "It is essential to eliminate them so that the trees are not injured. But hand labour is not nearly as efficient as ant power..."

Swingle was just as impressed. Yet despite his reports, many Western biologists were sceptical. In the West, the idea of using one insect to destroy another was new and highly controversial. The first breakthrough had come in 1888, when the infant orange industry in California had been saved from extinction by the Australian vedalia beetle. This beetle was the only thing that had made any in- T roads into the explosion of cottony cushion scale that was threatening to destroy the state's citrus crops. But, as Swingle now knew, California's "first'' was noth­ing of the sort. The Chinese had been expert in biocontrol for many centuries.

The long tradition of ants in the Chinese orchards only began to waver in the 1950s and 1960s with the introduction of powerful organic insecticides. Although most fruit growers switched to chemicals, a few hung onto their ants. Those who abandoned ants in favour of chemicals quickly became disillusioned. As costs soared and pests began to develop resistance to the chem­icals, growers began to revive the old ant patrols in the late 1960s. They had good reason to have faith in their insect workforce.

Research in the early 1960s showed that as long as there were enough ants in the trees, they did an excellent job of dispatching some pests - mainly the larger insects - and had modest success against others. Trees with yellow ants produced almost 20 per cent more healthy leaves than those without. More recent trials have shown that these trees yield just as big a crop as those protected by expensive chemical sprays.

One apparent drawback of using ants - and one of the main reasons for the early scepticism by Western scientists - was that citrus ants do nothing to control mealy bugs, waxy-coated scale insects which can do considerable damage to fruit trees. In fact, the ants protect mealy bugs in exchange for the sweet honey-dew they secrete. The orange growers always denied this was a problem but Western scientists thought they knew better.

Research in the 1980s suggests that the growers were right all along. Where X mealy bugs proliferate under the ants' protection, they are usually heavily parasitised and this limits the harm they can do.

Orange growers who rely on carnivorous ants rather than poisonous chemicals maintain a better balance of species in their orchards. While the ants deal with the bigger insect pests, other predatory species keep down the numbers of smaller pests such as scale insects and aphids. In the long run, ants do a lot less damage than chemicals - and they're certainly more effective than excommunication.

Reading Passage - Questions 

Questions 14-18

Look at the following events (Questions 14-18) and the list of dates below. Match each event with the correct time A-G. Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

14. The first description of citrus ants is traded in the marketplace.

15. Swingle came to Asia for research.

16. The first record of one insect is used to tackle other insects in the western world.

17. Chinese fruit growers started to use pesticides in place of citrus ants.

18. Some Chinese farmers returned to the traditional bio-method

List of Dates

A. 1888

B. AD 890

C. AD 304

D. 1950s

E. 1960s

F. 1915

G. 1130

Questions 19-26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 19-26 on your answer sheet write

• TRUE - if the statement agrees with the information
• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
• NOT GIVEN - if there is no information on this

19. China has more citrus pests than any other country in the world.

20. Swingle came to China to search for an insect to bring back to the US.

21. Many people were very impressed by Swingle's discovery.

22. Chinese farmers found that pesticides became increasingly expensive.

23. Some Chinese farmers abandoned the use of pesticide.

24. Trees with ants had more leaves fall than those without.

25. Fields using ants yield as large a crop as fields using chemical pesticides.

26. Citrus ants often cause considerable damage to the bio-environment of the orchards.

Tips for Answering Question Types in ‘The Ant and the Mandarin’ IELTS Reading Answers

First, let’s start with IELTS exam preparation tips for band score of 8+ for each question type. It’ll help you understand how to approach the problem of each question type in the ‘The Ant and the Mandarin’ Reading passage. 

Matching Features: 

Matching Features is a type of IELTS reading question that requires you to match a list of features to the correct people, places, or things in a passage. To answer matching features questions and obtain a high IELTS band score, you can use the following strategies:

• Read the features first: This will give you an idea of the types of information that you are looking for in the passage.
• Read the passage quickly: This will give you a general understanding of the content of the passage.
• Match the features to the people, places, or things: As you read the passage, look for the information that matches each feature.
• Check your answers: Once you have matched all of the features, double-check your answers to make sure that they are correct.

True/False/Not Given

• Read the instructions carefully: Understand the difference between “True,” “False,” and “Not Given.” “True” means the information is directly stated in the passage, “False” means it contradicts the information in the passage, and “Not Given” means the information isn’t mentioned in the passage.
• Refer to the passage: For each statement, go back to the passage and carefully locate the relevant information. Pay close attention to the wording of the statement and compare it to the information in the passage.
• Beware of paraphrasing: Sometimes, the statement is paraphrased in the passage, so be vigilant about synonyms and rephrase sentences.
• Focus on keywords: Identify the keywords in the statement and look for those exact words or synonyms in the passage.
• Watch out for distractors: The passage may contain information that seems related to the statement but isn’t directly addressing it. Don’t be tricked by these distractors; the answer should directly match the statement.

In conclusion, mastering “The Ant and the Mandarin” IELTS Reading text is all about understanding its deeper meaning, identifying key information, and tackling the question types with confidence. By reviewing its answers and explanations, you will sharpen your ability to analyze these kinds of passages more effectively. This is an essential skill for achieving a high band score. Hence, keep practicing, stay consistent, and remember that every reading passage you crack, brings you one step closer to your desired IELTS band score!

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