Yes, Your Highness

I observed a bunch of ants in the ant farm attending to one particular ant. I think it's the queen.

Read more!

Day 32: Status Check

It's day 32 since I started this ant farm. The ants have enlarged their underground chambers considerably and are now starting to bore tunnels towards the center of the ant farm to where I can't easily see their activities. This video shows just how much digging these ants have done so far.

Read more!

Cookies and Roaches

I think I finally have found out what the ants really like to eat. Cookies and roaches

I put in a small roach that I killed last night and by today, the head and most of the smaller legs were gone. The ants had stuffed the head down a tunnel close to where the body of the roach lay.

After I placed small bit of cookie inside, a bunch of ants started crawling all over it.

I noticed that ants crawling over the roach and cookie all had their heads faced up with mandibles wide open when I moved my head in for a closer look. They just stopped what they were doing and seemed to be warning me not to look at them. Interesting.

The ants are developing nicely. A bunch have now ended their pupae stage and are now walking about as adult ants. Haven't seen too many out topside foraging, though from what I've read, mostly the older and more likely to die ants go out to forage since the risk of disappearing or dying are greater for that of foragers. The youngest ants apparently start out with caregiving duty.

Read more!

Almost Done!

I took a picture this morning that clearly shows the near fully developed ants. Notice the darker colored pupae and how most of them are stacked at the bottom of the pile of developing ants. I counted nearly 30 some odd pupae in this chamber alone. Looks like I'll be needing to make a bigger ant farm soon!

Some yogurt drink, stale bread, apple, oat flakes, and some old dead bugs were on the menu this morning. By this evening, the only thing that was different about this picture was the addition of a dead ant in the yogurt drink. Either the ants are too full already or they just don't like the stuff I'm feeding them. They must be eating something judging from the large number of soon-to-be adult ants.

Read more!

The Next Generation

A new army is forming under the restless sands of the ant farm. Over half of the eggs that I collected from the orignal ant nest are in their pupal stage with visible appendages and are turning brown in color. This photo is bad, but you can see the light brown colored pupae mixed in with those that are still white in color.

I already see one or two new ants walking about and being groomed by their sisters. I say they are new because they are much lighter in color then their more mature compatriots.

Every time I take off the covering from around the ant farm, ants start moving the pupae into a recessed chamber where I can't view them. I hope that they'll leave most of the eggs/pupae right along the sides where I can see them.

Read more!

Menu

I'm still trying to figure out what exactly the ants like to eat. Here we have a platter of some steel cut oatmeal, a bit of spring roll wrapper, a nice big dead bug, a piece of Chinese medicine-like dried fruit that is good for your throat, and some nice sweet grapefruit juice.

Some of ants seem to like the grapefruit juice but it's not an overwhelming success like I expected. They really, really like freshly killed mosquitos, especially ones that are freshly gored on my blood. Every time I put a plump mosquito in, it's gone in 60 seconds.

Read more!

Queen!

The ants continue to tunnel merrily away. They have extended a tunnel downward to the right of the largest chamber where they are keeping the majority of developing eggs. I noticed that there are very tiny eggs sticking to the wall of the ant farm, so I think I do have a queen ant in there somewhere, though I can't really tell from looking at just the ants.
Read more!