Antworks the Antfarm of the Future

Antworks in Space
Ants have always amazed me! The way the complete colony behaves like a single animal, a busy network, communicating with each other like the cells of some giant alien brain.

Antworks in Space
Ants have always amazed me! The way the complete colony behaves like a single animal, a busy network, communicating with each other like the cells of some giant alien brain.
A great way to enjoy these wonderful creatures is to keep them in an ant farm or Antworks, that way the ants can be observed daily as they selflessly toil and labor for the good of the nest. Ant farms contain a mixture of sand and soil for the ants to nest in and are made from two pieces of glass or transparent plastic in a thin frame, therefore maximizing the amount of subterranean tunnels seen through the sides. However visibility is still poor as the tunnels need to be right against the sides of the farm to be visible. Wouldn’t it be great if there was some sort of transparent stuff for the ants to tunnel through?
 Unlikely as it seems NASA have developed such a medium.
It is understood that animals on earth know which way is up and which direction is down by noticing the effects of gravity. Scientists wanted to observe how ants behaved and tunneled in zero gravity, so specially developed antworks, along with all the other stuff astronauts take with them into space, were loaded onto space shuttle S.T.S. 107 5.2000 in 2003.
It would not have been possible to use a soil medium for the ant farm as the soil would not pack together good enough for tunneling, and would collapse with the g force on takeoff and landing. So the egg heads at NASA developed a transparent medium for the ants to tunnel in. In this medium the ants could be easily seen and the tunnels would not collapse under the forces experienced on the journeys to and from space. As an added bonus the ants could eat the gel which provided them with all the nutrients they needed and kept them hydrated in their Antworks throughout their journey.
These space aged ant habitats are now available for the public.One of the popular makes is Antworks and Antworks is a great addition to the ever expanding number of excellent educational science toys available in the UK.

Educational toys for learning science http://www.sciencetoy.co.uk

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