These are harvester ants with powerful jaws. In a strange coincidence, a harvester ant colony has a comparable number of neurons as a human brain (and sometimes they try to convey this message visually =) Blog on the hive mind.
There are about 1.6 million ants for every person on earth. The ants you see crawling around are all female.
This gel farm was developed by NASA to survive Space Shuttle launches (sand would shift and crush the ants under many G’s). They wanted to study tunnel formation in microgravity. The gel does not collapse during launch, and it contains all the food and water the ants need. It also has some antibiotics and anti-fungal agents.
The subject of Puzzle 39.
69 responses to “Miners”
A great photo and a fascinating description. Thank you for sharing!
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Seen in Scientist Photographers (?)
wow, I love this (and see a lot of other people do too!)
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Seen in Scientist Photographers (?)
WOW!
we just got our ants yesterday – 3 dead and the rest are busily digging.
we can’t, however, for the life of us figure out how to remove the dead ants. and there are tons of dire warnings to remove the dead ants.
alas, whenever the lid is removed, the ants rush to get out – had to squash one that made it out.
i’ve googled to no avail. there’s a plethora of retail sites providing the standard info that comes with the ant kit, but there’s no mention of how best to get the dead ants out other than "use a cotton swab or small stick".
one guy mentioned sticking home-caught ants in the freezer to make them more docile before initially introducing them to the farm.
i wonder if that’s what we’re supposed to do?
geez….
Oh, this brings back good memories…. I have a batch of dead ants in the gel here at my side and they seem to be mummified. No signs of rot for almost a year now. So perhaps the warnings are overblown.
I remember the mad rush for the exit each time the lid comes off. And then the comical attempt to get them back without a bite.
First, I would wait until they have dug to the bottom, and then watch their cycle. Sometimes, they all huddle down there (being cold should help, but I’d try the fridge before the freezer =)
Then you have a second or two when lifting the lid to get the corpses out. As soon as you open the lid, they will make a rush to the surface, so you have to be quick.
Related note: they are keenly sensitive to air changes. And this can be very helpful if you want to wake them up and make them all active. Just blow into one of the tiny holes on top. They instantly wake up and scurry about. A little boy discovered this trick, and it works everytime.
Not sure if it’s the CO2 or bad breath…. 😉
hi again! thanks for the tip — i managed to get two of them out by waiting til it was a bit of a cool morning and prying the lid to the point where it was easily lifted off but still covering the top. the prying part made the ants active, so i waited a bit til they went back to being sort of dormant, then i quickly lifted up the lid and scooped at the dead pile with a Q-tip and managed to snag a couple.
the other dead one is already quite buried with the dug-out globules — lots of tunnels in our farm — so i’m glad to hear there’s no mold in yours!
it really is such a cool little ‘toy’!
this is way to cool!
I saw this in the 100+ Faves group and Faved it.
Hope you don’t mind, this is my new desktop! Awesome photo! I’ve never seen anything like this! Bravo! Congrats on making Explore.
My husband, Martin, and I met you at Julian Hyde’s wedding up in Olema. Nice to see some of your work here on Flickr.
I only just started posting here in January.
Cheers!
Patti Taylor
Hi, I’m an admin for a group called Two Feet Under, and we’d love to have your photo added to the group.
Present your 100 F photo to a wider audience.
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A cool discussion in today’s EDGE:
Ants have algorithms. If you think about an ant colony, it’s a computing device
Positively incredible….
Just saw your photo used on this cool Wired article :
E.O. Wilson Proposes New Theory of Social Evolution
Incredible catch
well done
Seen in La Crème de la Crème
This is one of my all time favorite shots. Looks like outer space. Wish I has a vivarium like this. Congrats on this work of art!
cool reuse of this picture in an article comparing the foraging signals of these ants to the TCP of the Internet.
And Mashable did use this fantastic picture again here: mashable.com/2013/08/16/must-reads-8-16-13/ Congrats and regards.
I have used a rendered version of this photo at Un Bosque Interior | Juegos mentales
Love this photo! Wanted to share with you an article I wrote where I used that photo as the headline: http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/team-work-makes-dream-5-tips-adapt...
I did credit you and link back to this photo, but I wanted to personally reach out and share it with you because I thought it was such an amazing photo. I hope you enjoy my post. Thank you!