Antworks into the Future

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Ants have always exited me! The way the complete nest behaves like a single animal, a busy network, communicating with each other like the cells of some giant monster brain.
A great way to appreciate these amazing creatures is to keep them in an ant farm or Antworks,">http://www.sciencetoy.co.uk">Antworks, that way the ants can be watched daily as they selflessly toil and work for the good of the nest. Ant farms contain a combination of grit and loam for the ants to nest in and are created from two panes of glass or see through plastic in a narrow frame, so maximizing the amount of underground 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 seen. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was some type of transparent stuff for the ants to tunnel in?
Enter NASA, and an experiment to see how tunneling insects behave in zero gravity…
It is understood that animals on earth know which way is up and which direction is down by feeling 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 well enough for tunneling, and would collapse with the g force on takeoff and landing. So the egg heads at NASA developed a transparent gel 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 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 interesting educational">http://www.sciencetoy.co.uk">educational toys available in the UK.

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