What’s So Interesting About Ant Farms Anyway?

Visit a drug testing lab and you might well find hundreds of cute animals in cages. Are these pets? I don?t think so.  On a sheep station, you?ll find a number of border collies all very well trained in controlling flocks of sheep and making them do whatever the farmer wants. Typically dogs like this will not be allowed in the house, they are working dogs – not pets.

One might have thought that if an animal is able to receiving and giving affection, then it could be classed as a pet. Well, there’s no doubt that a border collie falls into this category. In fact it?s not easy to think of a more intelligent quadruped. But in this case it’s the attitude of the owner that defines the relationship. If the dogs are treated with lots of affection, it’s believed that they will be unlikely to work so well. This may or may not be true.

Ant Farms

So how does it work with insects in an ant farm? Well, if you relate to your ants as a sheep farmer relates to his dogs or as a scientist relates to his rats, then your ants are just test animals. But give them love and affection and they will be your pets for as long as they live (about two months). They won’t know the difference, but you’ll feel a whole lot better. There’s no doubt about it, gel ant farm are good for your blood pressure!

I’m not sure who built the original farm. The Chinese are usually in there first with most things. It needed the ability to produce reasonably good quality flat glass, and that didn’t really appear on any commercial scale until about the 1880?s. My guess is that Charles Darwin might have built one. Darwin was an inveterate experimenter so I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he’d built his own at Down House, in Kent.

Things have moved on a lot since then. Plastic ant farms that you can buy in kit form began to be marketed in the 1970s but it took the scientists at NASA to kick the ant farm into the 21st century.
They were interested in how ants’ tunnelling and underground navigational abilities were affected by the force of gravity. By putting them in weightless conditions in a space shuttle and analysing their tunnels they could see just how much of an influence gravity imposes.

They developed an ant farm, that, instead of using sand as the tunnelling medium, they opted for a transparent gel through which the shape and size of the tunnels is visible. These gel ant farms are now available on the internet.

Learn a whole lot more about ants and ant farms and gel ant farms at http://www.antfarmcentral.com

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