So much of the lives of ants and what they do is a mystery because they live underground in structures, that though resilient for their purposes are rather fragile from a human perspective.
The making of plaster and aluminum casts of ant nests has exposed the complex architecture of their nests.
Many cast-makers go for abandoned nests some of the youTube channels attract ant-haters who just want the poor things to burn.
Is there a less destructive way to see the structure of the nest?
Rachel Whiteread did just that, she's a neat artist, though this sculpture made some people angry... even though it's a comment on the absence of housing ... and spaces you can no longer enter.
I would feel differently if the cast of an ant nest were a modern artwork made by an ant With a title like "places I can no longer crawl."
I mean, even I don't feel that bad about fire ants getting cast... but they also have some of the least interesting nests IMO (less like a nest and more like a MESS) I don't fault the victims of fire ants for being a little angry.
But it's the fault of HUMANS they are in the wrong place. Nobody pours hot aluminum into the house of plant importers or gravel importers!
Could we instead discover the nest by putting some kind of tracker on the ants and sticking antennae rods in the soil maybe?
@futurebird Ultrasound maybe. RF antennas would be literally grounding the signals so it's kind of a hard problem. I looked this up for a novel once and where you end up with any range in RF at all is like literally 20hz and below.
@futurebird on the other hand, molten aluminum is a lot better than molten lead, which people poured into ant nests quite often not so long ago.
well, it's not really much different for the ants, but for everything else in the local environment, aluminum is a heck of a lot less dangerous than lead.