think or thwim

This is the best segment of a documentary called Ants! Nature’s Secret Power. From the movie:

The structure covers 538 square feet and travels 26 feet into the earth. In it’s construction, the colony moved 40 tons of soil. Billions of ant loads of soil were brought to the surface. Each load weighed four times as much as the worker ant, and in human terms, was carried over 1/2 mile to the surface. It is the equivalent of building the great wall of china. It is truly a wonder of the world…

So we filled it up with concrete. Sorry ants.

ant nests, ants

Walter Tschinkel at Florida State University has been making plaster casts of harvester ant nests to study ant architecture and behavior.

From Tschinkel’s paper (more pictures at the bottom):

Nests grow by simultaneous deepening, addition of new chambers and/or shafts and enlargement of existing chambers. As a result, the vertical spacing between chambers is similar at all nest sizes, and the relative distribution of chamber area with relative nest depth did not change during colony growth (that is, the size-free nest shape was the same at all colony sizes). Total chamber area increased somewhat more slowly than the population of workers excavating the nest.

I’d like to see what happens inside one of these when it rains. I found this. Does anyone have anything better?

ant nests, ants, architecture, insects