Ant Farm Update

The ants have been hard at work! I took photos at three separate times this past week to try to get a progression of the work the ants had done. I waited a little too long before taking these first photos, I think. The photo above shows how the habitat looks with the lights shining through it.

Here are the ants working in the bottom corner. They really cleared it out and made more than just a tunnel in that area.

The tunnels down the right side are pretty interesting... I wonder what possesses them to make these particular patterns when they are tunneling?

The above two photos were taken a few days after the first two. In this one, you can see the ants working on a new tunnel.

Here you can see that tunnel completed. They pretty much stopped tunneling after that... maybe they are now satisfied with their work?

They have been congregating at the bottom left corner where they made their cave - I guess it's like their little secret room. Wonder what they're plotting in there? They certainly do hang out there a lot now that they aren't really tunneling... guess they don't have much else to do! Some of them have been working at the surface though, making some paths through the bits of gel that they had deposited up there from when they dug out the tunnels initially.

They are certainly interesting to watch! And I have been surprised at how they aren't dying much at all - we just lost a few at the beginning, and they have all been plugging away just fine for a couple weeks now. I think the gel has some kind of property that helps to prevent disease, so that probably helps. I guess it's not quite like they would be if they were in a real anthill outside somewhere.