The Puritan work ethic has nothing on ants. After a day of orientation and an evening with the lights off, I come in to find that half of their village section has been tunneled through. Of course, ants bring their tunnel detritus to the top so not only does the little faux village look like a 1950’s post-atomic experiment nightmare with uber-ants having their way with the place, but now everything is mostly covered in convenient, easy to carry ant farm sand.
Ants are a little more macabre about their dead than I first expected. Initially there was a little ant cemetary set up for the less fortunate in the village, but when I came in this morning that had been moved. Upon further investigation, there seems to be 2 or 3 ants whose only job is to move dead ant carcasses from one location to another. What kind of fucked up ant karma do these little guys have to possess to be the Corpse Cartage of the ant world?
Do ants go insane? Perhaps. Or perhaps ant farm owners are not on top of things. My observations have revealed one particular ant who runs around frenetically (as ants do) carrying an ant head. Perhaps this ant is carrying different heads, trying to get them all in one place, or perhaps there are multiple ants transporting one head around, but this ant is slightly larger than the others and seems a little crazier than the rest. Impartial observation? Probably. Anthropomorphizing the ants? Perhaps. Projecting my own fears and anxieties onto the psyches of a species incapable of insanity? SHUT UP!
Another interesting observation is that the ants seem to be working more in the areas exposed to more light. The entire setup is partially under a counter and therefore partially shaded. The ants are avoiding the shaded area. Tomorrow I will carefully flip the village around and see if their habits change.
Ants would also make horrible drivers even in specially modified cars. They tend to find themselves in traffic jams all the time and if there are more than 3 involved it can take quite a while to resolve it. After an initial antenna scuffle they just sit there, unmoving. At first I thought i had a plug of dead ants in one of my tubes but 30 minutes later they slowly started extricating themselves from the pile. Too bad Eric Estrada is not around to help save them from this 30 ant Chips-style pile up.