(The new wing is like being inside of a fungus!)
Our local natural history museum has a whole new wing. It features an "insectarium" with a variety of live insects to observe, but the stars of the show are the massive colony of leaf cutter ants. Here is a photo of me inside of a giant honeycomb. I'm so glad that there is more focus on insects at the museum!
Here is an article about some of the challenges they faced setting up the exhibit.
I went to see the colony on Saturday and stayed for almost two hours. It's a massive colony with about 8 fungal chambers! They have take a lot of care to make the ants easy to see. I made a video that tracks the journey of one of the ants... they really have them walking a long way to get back to their nest (video has narration) :
Have any of you had the chance to go? I know I'll be back every chance I get... heck... might sneak over to watch the colony on my lunch hour.
I probably spent a good hour there just looking at the colonies. They seem to have removed the leafcutter’s “outworld” and instead put their leaves in a smaller container close to the nest. That did make harder to see them which was a bit disappointing but it was super cool nonetheless. They also had a smaller colony of honeypot ants with a ton of repletes. This colony was actually small enough that you could see the queen. They were housed in a THA Hearth style nest except larger and embedded into the wall. All in all I’m super happy I went 10/10 highly recommended!
