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I thought an ant colony would be cool to have, but where could I put it where it wouldn't get in the way?
If it was simultaneously a coffee table then it would be a very trendy bit of talking-point furniture, and I would also have a formicarium.
To expand the idea furthur, you could make pluggable
formicarium parts which you could build all sorts of furniture out of, and keep lots of ants and maybe other colony insects in observable places in your living space.
Would need a lot of development though to avoid this being leaky and high maintenance furniture...
Formica
http://www.formica....ion/woodgrains.html
Woodgrain-effect... [hippo, May 10 2007]
Formica
http://www.formica....ction/patterns.html
..and groovy patterns too. [hippo, May 10 2007]
classy-looking formicarium
http://www.disktek.net/formic1.html
[hippo, May 10 2007]
[link]
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I've got furniture with termites in it. |
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I've seen beehives kept behind glass walls, so this is probably possible. |
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But can we please make sure the colonies include a queen, so they reproduce, and an exit so they can get their own food? |
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Also be sure to research the effects of slamming your coffee down on the table. |
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yeah, I think it might be hard to get them to want to live in there. I was thinking less of an exit, and more of a feed/clean drawer: I don't want ants all over my living room!
Beehives behind glass walls sounds cool :) |
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I want a Formica formicarium. |
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A conservatory in St. Paul, Minnesota, has a leaf-cutter ant colony. They say it doesn't need much care and has been going over a year. |
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Oddly enough (and this is of very little
relevance, by the way) I've just set up a
formicarium in the lab (we're not
allowed to keep vertebrates there*).
Unfortunately, I picked a huge European
species that bloody hibernates, so the
first task is "wait until spring". |
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To solve this hibernatorial problem, I'm
just about to order a colony of weaver
ants, which are bigger and meaner and
don't hibernate. |
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Incidentally, the "formicarium" in the
link is actually an "ant farm", and isn't
really ideal, except for teeny ants. |
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Any other ant-fans out there? |
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[*we tried filleting a goldfish, but
apparently that still counts. I have a
plan to get a giant squid as our next lab
pet.] |
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me, I actually tried raising weaver ants, but so far, my attempts in the sense were futile... I got a queen weaver ant from a fully established colony(95% lucky), and man, she was massive, approximately 2 inches in length. Her abdomen is very unlike from that of the other queen ant species, and infact, very large in comparisson to the other weaver ant queen I've ever seen; it was white all around except for the "far from each other" chestnut - colored plates. In fact, her abdomen was so swollen with eggs that they resembled the bolster - like abdomen of major Isoptera species. And what an egg laying machine - 1 egg every 15-20 seconds, so far the most prolific queen ant I ever encountered. |
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@WAGSTER , back to the topic, have you ever raised these ants successfully? My colony was not thriving, until the queen's abdomen shrunk to 65% of it's previous size, so I released the captives back to their original colony... What's the best way of keeping them? |
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I've got a colony of weaver ants
(Polyrhachis dives) at the moment - came
as a nest with about 500 ants (and
hopefully a queen in there somewhere).
So far they're just running around inside
the antarium. About a third of them seem
to wander about carrying other, dead ants.
They're hoovering up cooked chicken and
ham pretty damn fast. |
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It would be a nice conversational point. |
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Did anyone else see the title as "Fornication Furniture" at first glance? |
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add a hopper for organic waste, so they could eat. |
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I had a dream years ago of making a huge ant farm from one of those extra deep picture frames. It fell apart when I discovered delivery of live ants requires a signature in person. My boss was very indulgent, but having bugs delivered to the loading dock was not on. |
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Nice to know that you feed them with cooked meat, but what does your formicarium looks like? the typical glass type? or the jar? does it qualify as a furniture? |
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[efmp] I think you meant me rather than
[Wagster]? Anyway, their present
formicarium is just a regular aquarium.
Their deluxe home is under construction,
complete with double glazing. (Seriously-
for tropical ants you need double glazing,
otherwise the glass is always covered in
condensation). |
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I'm also converting a very early Toshiba
laptop into a formicarium for smaller ants. |
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//I'm just about to order a colony of weaver ants, which are bigger and meaner and don't hibernate.// |
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You might like to consider inch-long brick-red bull ants, simply because they're the only ants I know that rear up and stare back at you. It's a bit disconcerting the first couple of times, but it would make your lab pets more of a talking point. |
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