Saturday, May 1, 2010

Ant Progress

Our ants have made amazing progress! Here's some photos of their work:


This is the front view. Nearly all of the tunnels are interconnected. There are two new tunnels being built towards each other that will connect into a small circular path soon.


Here is a view of the back. If you look in the far bottom corner, you'll see that it looks brown. That's because that section is being used at what appears to be a sleeping chamber. Most of the ants congregate there and barely move while a smaller portion will continue working in the tunnels. After a few minutes, individual ants will reanimate and crawl away to begin working again.


This is the back view from the other direction, with the sleeping chamber closer to the camera.

One of our favorite things to watch is the ends of the tunnels where the ants are digging. You can see their mandibles pierce the clear part of the gel just past the end of the tunnel, clamp down, and dig out balls of gel. After a couple of digs, they gather the combined ball and carry it up to the top.

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