You can always change this.

I constantly make some typing errors, mostly materialized as two characters in place of the other. Those typical ones: jsut, evaluaiton, and othres. With the widespread of automatic correctors and as-you-type spell checkers, be it in IM clients or typesetting software, I am becoming less and less aware about these typos. In fact, I think that as I type by looking “somewhere else than onto screen” and type fast, I commit more of those, not even knowing.

Perhaps, I should turn the automatic corrections off in good time. In future, there will be an automatic grammar-and-style-and-typos corrector, and if I continue in my bad practice, I will become ignorant even to the grammatical and stylistic errors.

After unanticipated problems with some of the individuals, we decided to free the previous colony. However, new ants arrived, species of Formica Nuutinentia Magnus.

Check our (semi)live video feed:

Apart from exploring the new environment, our new volunteers began immediately to digg their tunnels. Also, in contrast with the previous sample, this new colony does not hold meetings so often. Instead, certainly a high level of individual responsibility can be observed.

Shortly about the transport of the ants and their placement into the space-habitat: it turned out to be a good trick to decrease the temperature of the surrounding air to about 8C (not a problem in Finland during these days). Without doing that, the ants became too active and they resisted the transport by disoriented running all around.

It’s been about a week since we have installed the twenty brave ants into the space habitat, full of rich nutritious gel. Starting from last Friday, ants gradually became passive, most of their time spending in the holes, but probably sleeping. Little progress has been done in digging the tunnels. To avoid suffocation, additional air-supplies have been provided. However, the added oxygen has not caused an increase in activity. Some observers speculated that ants are expiring!

We believe this is not truth! Quite opposite, the colony is shaken from outrageous behavior of some individuals (inside the habitat). This morning, there has been a fight between two of the more active ants. Probably in a dispute over who will be the first one to dig a new hole, one ant took a bite in another’s hind. To our surprise, the sufferer, probably due to the exhaustion from the fight, unfortunately died. It’s then understandable that these quarrels delay our colony from more organized construction of the under-gel kingdom.

One positive news in the end though: our laboratory has signed an exclusive contract with anTV, so now we can bring you a live video feed from the colony:
Before we arrange the details about the copyrights and to save the bandwidth, image needs to be manually refreshed.

UPDATE: after turning the habitat upside down, ants start to move!

In the mean time, ants started to dig deeper. Although it seems that this work has been assigned to only some individuals, at times even traffic jams occurred!

Some fresh observations: Ants are much more active (in digging the tunnels) when the air is colder and it is dimmer outside. That also means that during the days the colony is almost static. After I exposed the habitat into a straight sunlight, all ants dived deep into the holes.

I was told that some bigger species are scheduled to arrive in next few hours or days, so we might witness soon what does it look like when one needs to fight for a gel!

As I mentioned before, the first attempt to acquire some new citizens of AntWorks was not exactly a success. I invited an expert to help me with the task and he showed me the best spot to catch the ants: the front of Science Park.

We got around twenty healthy (at the moment of their transport, confirmed by rapid movements along the grass) exemplars of Formica Ostiensis Scientia. This time the transport from their natural environment to the space-technology habitat took about 10 minutes, to ensure no or minimal harm. Nevertheless, after we move them to the container, we realized that some individuals lost an antenna, eventually a leg or two. I have to note that there is a possibility that by random sampling some ants could have had their disabilities 1) congenitally, 2) acquired before we spot them.

Anyway, the population was moved into the nutritious environment and quickly began to explore the boundaries of the container. To our great surprise about six of the ants managed to escape without a notice. It seems the most probable that they discovered the two air-channels in the lid and slipped through them out.

Situation at the moment: some tunnels have been dug, and one dead body found, probably a casualty of heavy workload. Ants appear to be relaxed, almost apathic, often found in big groups, probably discussing the recent change. The air-channels have been sealed, but air condition is regulated through supplies by opening the main lid.

Ants are amazing. Did you know that an ant can lift up to twenty times the weight of its body? How inspiring!
AntWorks is a “NASA experiment” type of product that contains a nutritious gel in which ants can live, build their tunnels, or even breed their colony!

I got one AntWorks habitat in March, when no ants were yet available. But now the time has come, and I yesterday went on hunting for my first bunch of ants. There is a path in our garden that ants use frequently, so it was not a miracle I could easily pick about 30 of the antkind. I carefully put them into a glass jar and closed the lid.

To avoid any harm to ‘my’ ants, I gave them some sugar, hoping they can then better bear the conditions of the restricted environment. It was too late I realized that ants moisturized some of the sugar, and so their limbs stuck on the walls of the glass. Yes, ant is a strong pest that lifts up to 20 times its weight, but not so strong that it could dismember its limbs. Some of my ants (about 6) stopped moving; even after I intensely shook the jar, they appeared to be glued to the walls. They might have been sleeping, but in retrospection I guess they bravely passed out in the sugar emulsion. Still many were left alive at that time, and at the same time, I had no idea of doing any harm!

To even improve their well-being, before we (me and my ants!) went to sleep, I carefully poured few drops of water, in case any dehydration might have occurred during the night. It turned out, in the morning, that this was the last Sacrament for most of the ants. They either drown in the sugar bath, or they stuck on the walls, or some other, to me unknown incident has happened.

So, in the coming days, I am about to hunt for more ants but avoiding any sugar and water. To be continued..

You want to love me tender.

The very first from the guys that appear in the video won my heart. Absolutely fine. Do you wanna love me tender too?