What Does an Ant Colony Look Like?

Posted on August 4th, 2008

I found this very cool video about scientists studying ant colonies. They found a large grass-cutter ants colony and studied how the colony is ventillated. In another colony, they poured a ridiculous amount of cement to freeze the colony's structure underground, which they then excavated.

What they found was utterly amazing. Check it out!

Subscribe to Blog of Science!

If you liked this post, please subscribe to the blogSci.com RSS feed:

4 Responses to “What Does an Ant Colony Look Like?”

  1. Yura Says:

    Amazing. It’d be interesting to look at the architecture, indeed.

    But, but..they killed the entire colony (at least they don’t show scaring them off).

  2. konja Says:

    “… but the ants feel their community is threatened and retaliate…”

    :-\ er, go ants.

    The size and complexity of the colony structure is a real surprise. Probably more so for the ants.

    Would be nicer to examine things without rendering them totally useless… huh. Still, nice video.

  3. Cate Says:

    Actually, the scientists lured the ants to another area using food where they formed a new colony. In the process of the whole thing, they only lost 1/2% of the ants. They then used wax and plaster to rebuild the excavated colony and lured the ants back where they resumed their habits.

  4. MD Says:

    That is a great video. It was pretty neat to watch the ants cutting into the testing tube with their pincers. But, I was truly in awe by the complexity of their colony. Simply amazing!

Leave a Reply