Yasmin Mendoza
9-26-17
5th hour
Process Paper What is an Ant Farm? An Ant Farm is known as a project to study an ant colony and the behavior each ant carries. There are many ways to start one of these colonies and many ways to maintain them. This could be a really cool science project or even a type of “pet” to have. The first thing you need is a formicarium, which is a type of transparent box thin enough to study the ants and for the ants to make their tunnels. You need three types of dirt which are soil, loam, and sand. The last thing you need is of course the most important, which is the ants but also remember not to mix different species of ants. Also you must never mix ants from a different colony because each ant carries a distinct scent and if an ant carries one that does not pertain to the rest of the ants is automatically considered an enemy. In order to get ants for your ant farm you are encouraged to set out attractive foods and follow them to their nest in order to capture them. These ants always use the same route when they are foraging food and taking it back to their nest because of a type of chemical they leave behind which is called pheromone. A queen ant is a key factor because if there is no queen the worker ants won’t be able to lay eggs, so in order to find a queen you must dig out the …show more content…
The first way is the traditional sand filled farm that you order and they give you a bag of a sand be sure to bake the dirt in the oven for about 10 minutes to kill any bacteria it may carry and then you simply pour it into the formicarium. The other type of ant farm is the gel type. This type of ant farm was created by NASA as an experiment to see if these itty bitty creatures could survive zero gravity. But the way these are set up is different compared to the sand with these is that they are filled with space-age gel. It may take your ants a while to adjust before they figure out they can eat the
9-26-17
5th hour
Process Paper What is an Ant Farm? An Ant Farm is known as a project to study an ant colony and the behavior each ant carries. There are many ways to start one of these colonies and many ways to maintain them. This could be a really cool science project or even a type of “pet” to have. The first thing you need is a formicarium, which is a type of transparent box thin enough to study the ants and for the ants to make their tunnels. You need three types of dirt which are soil, loam, and sand. The last thing you need is of course the most important, which is the ants but also remember not to mix different species of ants. Also you must never mix ants from a different colony because each ant carries a distinct scent and if an ant carries one that does not pertain to the rest of the ants is automatically considered an enemy. In order to get ants for your ant farm you are encouraged to set out attractive foods and follow them to their nest in order to capture them. These ants always use the same route when they are foraging food and taking it back to their nest because of a type of chemical they leave behind which is called pheromone. A queen ant is a key factor because if there is no queen the worker ants won’t be able to lay eggs, so in order to find a queen you must dig out the …show more content…
The first way is the traditional sand filled farm that you order and they give you a bag of a sand be sure to bake the dirt in the oven for about 10 minutes to kill any bacteria it may carry and then you simply pour it into the formicarium. The other type of ant farm is the gel type. This type of ant farm was created by NASA as an experiment to see if these itty bitty creatures could survive zero gravity. But the way these are set up is different compared to the sand with these is that they are filled with space-age gel. It may take your ants a while to adjust before they figure out they can eat the