Excavating an ant colony

This is simply breathtaking.

In the video, researchers pump 10 tons of concrete down an ant hole and then slowly, carefully excavate the site to see what an ant colony looks like. The result is an intricate structure, equivalent in labor to humans building the Great Wall of China.

And then you think, "Oh, and we just pumped 10 tons of concrete down it. Oh. We're ... kind of assholes sometimes, aren't we?" Sorry ants. Sants.

Via Richard Martyniak

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

MORE: ants • behavior • biology • humans are kind of assholes • insects • Science • social insects

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zombiebob

Poor Ant-bastard at 2:19… probably thinking some ant-equivalent to “The Horror… The Horror…”
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

Every time I accidentally knock over an anthill (I haven’t purposely knocked one over since I was at least ten) I’m always fascinated by how the ants scurry around and immediately begin rebuilding. I’d think there’d be a moment when they’d stop and say, “DAMN. Thanks, buddy. Do you have any idea how long it took to build that?”

I also wonder if the comparison to the Great Wall of China isn’t selling the ants short. The Great Wall is an impressive structure, but considering the size of even the largest ant building a structure that could be filled with ten tons of concrete sounds more like the equivalent of building a Great Wall that really could be seen from space.
- zarray
  
  Ant New York City?
- AlexG55
  
  I was pcurious about this, so I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Turns out that the difference in scale (in terms of mass) between this and the Great Wall is about the same as that between an ant and a human:
  Assuming the Great wall is 5 metres wide, 7 metres high, and built of bricks, it weighs 600 million tonnes, or 60 million times the ants’ nest.
  A 60kg human (a reasonable estimate for an average 5th-century-BC Chinese person) is 60 million times the mass of a 1 mg ant…
  - waetherman
    
    I thought for a second you said you were pi-curious, which I suppose is a phase every math major in college goes through…
    
    What I don’t understand is if they used 10 tons of cement to fill it, and cement is typically about twice as dense as dirt, why do they say that the ants excavated 40 tons of dirt? Seems like it would be more like 5. And that’s not taking in to account the mass of the evaporated water…
http://religionsetspolitics.blogspot.com/ Joshua Zelinsky

When this sort of experiment is done they often used an abandoned colony. I don’t know if they did in this case, but the lack of any visible response by the ants themselves suggests this is an abandoned colony.
- robdobbs
  
  This is from a longer documentary and yes, the colony was dead pre-cement.
  - Cowicide
    
    It’s good to know the antholes weren’t raided by assholes.
http://twitter.com/bigbadchang Chang Terhune

i see an ant version of POLTERGEIST here. Movie gold.
- KKnox
  
  Reminds me of Phase IV
  http://horrorfanzine.com/phase-iv-1974/
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

“truly a wonder of the world”

and just think those things are everywhere, all around us, under our feet.

wow.
- wysinwyg
  
  +1 for heartfelt wow
Rasputin

I had quite the ant infestation in my yard, and when I finally found the mound they made it turned out it was under my patio. I used a high powered hose to wash it away and darned if those little buggers didn’t make chains out of themselves trying to save the larvae/pupae. They all went down the drain anyway (we all float down here, timmy!).
tomrigid

The “Well of Souls” music was priceless (and creepy).
DreamboatSkanky

Christ, what an ant hole.
- http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios
  
  winner, winner…chicken dinner.
jaypee

Aahahahah, nice Look Around You reference.

Blessed are the ants. Blants.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JG5AYMZ2NLPAERVKIS2SCIZDPQ Nothing Much

Has to be said … Phase IV.
http://chicagoscooterclub.com Chicago_SC

I had an ant farm once; those little Fuckers didn’t grow Shit.

I said, come on what about some celery, you fuckers don’t farm, plus if i tore your legs off you’d look like snowmen!
- http://twitter.com/Bodminzer Kieran Manners
  
  You are allowed to swear. This is the internet.
  - http://chicagoscooterclub.com Chicago_SC
    
    No fuckin’ way?
    
    Ladies and gentlemen, shit’s about to get real.
    - EH
      
      that’s not president camacho.
      - http://chicagoscooterclub.com Chicago_SC
        
        Yes but I was going for a deep impact.
Ianto_Jones

Deadant, deadant, deadant deadant DEADant deadant DEADAAAAAANT Deadeadeadeadant.
http://dustindriver.com dustindriver

Sants.

Maggie, I think I love you.
Allan McCoy

Wasn’t this on boingboing back in Dec, 2008?
http://dustindriver.com dustindriver

And:

Archology: You’re doing it right.
MrsBug

Every time the narrator mentioned some stupendous factoid about this marvel (“they moved 40 tons of earth”), my mind kept adding to the end, “…and we’ve destroyed it.”

Yeah, I knows. Science, advancing knowledge, blah blah. My tendency to anthropomorphize everything doesn’t do me any favors.
- http://profiles.google.com/joshuabardwell Joshua Bardwell
  
  The ant hill was apparently already abandoned.
http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin

I tried to load the video, twice, but both times it stopped about 1/4 of the way through.
sarah heller

Thanks, Ants. Thants.
Ito Kagehisa

I couldn’t get the video either (no doubt Boing’d) so I am left wondering: How the heck do you pump concrete down an anthole?

If I make ‘crete soupy enough to pass through a straw it’ll harden up about as strong as wet toilet paper. And what would you use for aggregate? Talcum powder?
Shai_Hulud

Many ants died to bring us this information.
LinkMan

Technically I think this is a repost. But the 2008 post has an embedded video that has since been removed so I can’t tell if this is a shorter snippet of the same video or just something similar.
- jerwin
  
  The full video is on hulu: Ants– Nature’s Secret power.
  
  The narration is a bit awkward, but perhaps I haven’t watched enough nature documentaries.
Antinous / Moderator

The Ellinson girl is not impressed.
http://profiles.google.com/keithdtyler Keith Tyler

http://boingboing.net/2006/05/23/orthodontal-molds-of.html
penguinchris

Would be a cool thing to carefully break apart and then reassemble in a science museum!

Also, it would be interesting if after pouring the concrete they tried various subterranean imaging techniques (which wouldn’t work with just empty air in there) to get a computer model. Eh, I’m not sure of the state of such techniques except as used in geology where such small scales aren’t typically looked at.
mat catastrophe

There is fundamentally no difference between an ant colony and anything that humanity has ever constructed.

And, no purpose behind either. It’s just what we do.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ian-Maldonado/682869431 Ian Maldonado

Semi relevant, here’s an interesting TED talk about digging up ant colonies:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/deborah_gordon_digs_ants.html

One thing that blew my mind when watching it is that queens will mate once and then stay in their chamber laying eggs for up to 20 years laying eggs using the sperm from that initial mating.

ANTS!
http://aqfl.net Ant

Ants FTW!
caseyweederman

I read the line “Sorry, ants” and thought heh, sants, and then read “Sants”, and then thought “Friggen’ right! <3"