A few weeks ago I discussed the ant farm that my husband Georg has in his office. The photo I included was from right after we introduced the ants to their habitat, so I thought I'd make you an update showing you all the progress they've made!
The ants live in a gel that serves as their food, water, and also as the material with which they make their tunnels. When I saw the ants for the second time after we set the ant farm up (about 2 weeks later), they'd done a lot of tunneling! They bite the gel with their mandibles and carry these very small but uniform-looking pieces of it up to the top of the habitat. It creates tunnels with a very interesting icy-looking texture, and also creates a material not unlike snow on top of the gel, where the ants put the gel particles they've carried out of the tunnels.
Georg has noticed that only about a third of the ants work at any given time. The rest of them hang out in a home base located in the bottom right corner of the habitat. So in the pictures about 10 of the ants are working, whereas the other 20 are resting in the gel below.
An interesting thing about ants--they bury their dead. When an ant dies, Georg says that within 5 minutes the ants have sensed it and moved the dead and up to the top of the habitat, where they bury it in the snow-like bitten-off gel pieces they move out of the tunnels. Georg gets in the habitat with a pair of tweezers when he sees a buried dead ant needs removal.
The other day when I visited the ants, there was much more "snow" buildup than what you see in the pictures. It was almost up to the top of the habitat, so much so that the ants were standing on the top of it and trying to gnaw at the plastic lid of the habitat. We decided to refrigerate the ants for a bit to slow them down, then remove some of the snow. I think it looks much better in there and hopefully they will be more productive now that their habitat is cleared out.
Georg took these pictures, by the way! I really love how he positioned the rubber brain next to the habitat, nice touch Georg :) .
1 comment:
i looooove it!
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