Casting a Fungus Farming Ant Colony with Molten Aluminum (Cast #107)

1

  • 35
  • 0
  • 0.171
  • Reply

  • Open in the desktop app ADD TO PLAYLIST

    anthillart

    Published on Sep 01, 2021
    About :

    In this video, a cast is made of a fungus farming ant colony (Trachymyrmex septentrionalis) using an aluminum alloy. If you’ve seen my other videos, you may have noticed that each species of ant has a very distinct colony structure. Fire ant colonies have a dense network of tunnels with many small chambers whereas carpenter ants usually have a single tunnel leading to just a few large flat chambers. The fungus farming ant colonies have one of the most unique structures of all the colonies I’ve cast. These colonies have very large bulb-like chambers in which they actually farm fungus for food using plant matter as compost.

    The colonies are easily identifiably here because they deposit the excavated dirt in a crescent-shaped mound a few inches from the colony entrance. There are a very large number of these colonies here. You could easily find 50 colonies per acre.

    These colonies are very challenging to cast. They have very narrow (1/8 to 1/4” in diameter) tunnels leading to the large bulbs. During past attempts, the aluminum or zinc hardened in the tunnels before the chambers were filled. This time I used an aluminum alloy which maintains its temperature longer and has lower viscosity. That did the trick.

    More pictures of this cast at: https://anthillart.com/castings/107/

    Tags :

    ants casting science nature anthill art

    Woo! This creator can upvote comments using 3speak's stake today because they are a top performing creator! Leave a quality comment relating to their content and you could receive an upvote worth at least a dollar.

    Their limit for today is $0!
    Comments:
    Time until anthillart can give away $0 to their commenters.
    0 Days 0 Hours 0 Minutes 0 Seconds
    Reply:

    To comment on this video please connect a HIVE account to your profile: Connect HIVE Account

    More Videos

    14:38
    10 views 2 years ago $
    13:46
    1 views 3 years ago $
    04:50
    12 views 3 years ago $
    03:42
    23 views 2 years ago $
    07:54
    1 views 3 months ago $
    10:07
    9 views a year ago $
    00:19
    8 views 2 months ago $
    09:11
    1 views a year ago $