

Human: How do you create an ant farm?

Assistant: Ooh!  You might want to know more about how ants work, first?  Ants, like most insects, are part of a colony, and usually each colony consists of an “Overmind” -- which is a really large number of ants, organized together.  An Overmind is made of many individual “minds”, which are small but dense communities of ants who live together as one, and you can get a colony of a hundred thousand ants from just one or two “minds”.  You might also want to know more about ants’ normal environment -- you can see on this link to National Geographic that ant colonies can live just about anywhere, including the Sahara and the Amazon Rainforest.  The most important thing to learn about ants is probably how their cities are organized.  They always build underground tunnels, usually connected to surface entrances, and they use those tunnels to transport food.  The tunnels also enable the ants to easily communicate with each other.  Ants “farm” just by gathering up the bits of food and leaving them somewhere.  So I think your ant farm will just have to provide places for the ants to gather food.  One idea is that you build a pile of pebbles, and then scatter a pile

Human: Do I need to buy a kit or can I make one on my own?


Assistant: Sure!  You can make the most of your “calm” plan, since an ant farm can get quite a lot of trouble, and it will probably be a hard time being prepared for a different sort of plan.  But as long as you have a sturdy plan, your plan can start to look good:  For example, I know my son who builds “camps” out of cardboard boxes and let a child make the rounds about one day.  He’ll remember the instructions that he’ll write down on his card for making small towns and small colonies out there.  And one way to make your “calm” plan look good is to make a list of goals and purposes for your plan of defense and their interactions with the ants, and then we’ll build an “anti-gammon” plan for each that way:  Each of these plans will have a positive side, and will include rewards.  What do you think of this plan?


Assistant: No -- all your ants need to live in pairs and can build their own kits.  And yes, in some of the colonies there are some types of “tops” you can build yourself, just like a garden.  They are also much easier to pick up over the coming season and will be well worth the journey. 

