Ant progress

Our ants have started to do a bit of work in their strange new gel-y home. Up til last night, almost all of them were huddled in one corner, while 2-3 would wander about. This morning we found that they'd made quite the hole out of a hole that the wandering ants had started, right in the corner at the opposite end from where they were huddled. Problem is, they all just moved the huddling to the hole. It's not very exciting, but at least there is evidence of them doing something with their surroundings.

While the gel also is their source of food, they of course don't eat all of the gel they take out when digging. They carry lumps up to the surface to deposit it. These ants seems to deposit the lumps fairly spread-out so that the area all around the hole, even on the walls, is covered in bits of gel. It looks like it wasn't dug out by the ants, but that they used some tiny dynamite at night to blow a hole in the gel. They also handily dumped a bunch of gel in the opening of a hole we had made for them. I guess they don't care much for our help.

One of the few ants wandering around spent most of the day trying to nibble his way through the air-tight seal in the lid. I don't know what it is made out of (not quite foam and not quite plastic), but I doubt the makers of the Antworks would have expected the ants to eat their way through it. Fortunately only the one ant has picked up on this idea, so as long as he doesn't pass on his knowledge, I think we're save from them escaping.