Bringing Nature Inside: AntWorks Ant Habitat

Did you ever try to make an ant farm when you were a kid? I remember being fascinated by the workers and especially the queen, then disappointed when the colony didn't survive long enough to get established.

Fast-forward a couple decades to the present day, and my son got a space-technology ant habitat for his birthday. This thing is brilliant! It looks simple: A container filled with a clear gel. But the gel does double duty, serving as both the tunneling medium and as sustenance for the ants. It was originally designed to allow the study of ants in space, where the gel would not collapse during re-entry the way soil would. The at-home version is about the size of a paperback book. It is not designed for a colony, but more for the opportunity to observe ant tunneling behavior. (No queen required!)

So my son and I opened it up and he immediately asked the most obvious question--where do we get the ants? Well, you can order a package of harvester ants from AntWorks, but living where we live, I thought it would be no problem to find some on our own. (Let's be honest, I would not have been surprised had the ants found the habitat without any help from us.) Hurray for ant hunting! Our first attempt involved a bit of pancake syrup and a plastic tray. We got a whole mess of tiny little ants, plopped them into the habitat...and then watched them squirm and squeeze their tiny tushies out through the two minute airholes, leaving us with an empty habitat. For our second attempt, dear hubby took our son to the park and went "fishing" for ants. Syrup on a stick, because we're high-tech like that. A fun time was had by all. I'm still not sure if they are leafcutters or harvesters, but we got about 16 ants ready for their new home!

The product manual says to expect waiting 24-48 hours to see tunneling. I was really crossing my fingers that we would get timely results that look like the ones in all the pictures... and man oh man we got some very smart ants! Or at least highly motivated! After one hour, they had started their first tunnel, down one side. Every time someone walked past the habitat, we automatically stopped to watch. We could see the ants using their mandibles to tear off pieces of gel, then carrying the crumbs to the service. At his bedtime the first night, my son asked us to check up on the ants. They slept on the surface, without sufficient space below "ground." The next night they slept in their main chamber (bottom left in the picture). Each day, we made predictions about where the ants would tunnel next, and crowed when we were correct. After three days of hard work (for the ants!), this is how it looked:

The ants now seem to be taking a break from tunneling, but they keep moving. I'm happy because we were able to snag some library books about ants to see if we can find out more about why ants tunnel the way they do. And every morning, we check to see if they have done any more excavating.

If this looks like just the thing for your budding scientist, you can get a version of AntWorks with illumnation or without (affiliate links). I can even imagine this being a fun alternative to keeping a fish at the office!