Over the course of three days, scientists pumped 10 tons of concrete into an ant hill. After letting it set, the colony was excavated, revealing a structure of staggering complexity covering 50 square meters and running 8 meters deep. The ants who built this particular colony moved out 40 tons of earth in the process of construction, with each worker carrying three times his own weight in soil on each trip. According to the video, it is the ant equivalent of building the Great Wall.
A vast complex city-state with tubular roads and air vents and bulbous extensions, it looks space age in the contained environment manner of Charles De Gaul International airport with its connected travel tubes and pods. It calls to mind Frank Herbert’s Dune with its underground drug mining society and giant worms. These are the Invisible Cities that Italo Calvino didn’t write about.
- Alexandra
No comments:
Post a Comment