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Antworks Habitat
It's a space age antquarium.
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Antworks Habitat
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$49.95
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Quantity:
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What the Antworks Habitat is all about...
 NASA is the US space agency responsible for such great feats as Armstrong on the moon and Tom Hanks on Apollo 13. It has an annual budget of over 13 billion dollars and what does an agency of this caliber do with that kind of dosh? Well, they send insects into space of course!
The Antworks Habitat is based on a 2003 NASA Space Shuttle experiment to study animal life in space and tests how ants successfully tunnel in microgravity. We aren’t quite sure why it’s important for humanity to understand how ants like weightlessness, but we expect it might have something to do with Kent Brockman's suggestion of a master race of giant space ants though!
 Nevertheless, the Antworks Habitat comprises of cool blue gel housed in an antquarium-designed case that serves as both home and food for ants - allowing you to watch them in comfort as they tunnel away forming new colonies...all the while requiring no additional food or water, which puts a whole new meaning on easy pet care.
How ants get the strength to lift 20 times their own body weight we’ll never know, but please don’t try eating the magic blue gel as part of your own superhuman strength plan.
Product Specification
The Antworks™ Habitat measures 17 x 14 x 4cm in dimension and includes 1 x Case (with gel), 1 x Illuminating Mains Powered Base, 1 x Magnifying Glass, 1 x Ant Catching/Tunnel Starter Tool and an instruction booklet with interesting facts about ants.Please note: Whilst the blue gel is non-toxic, parental supervision is required when in use by children. This product is not recommended for children under the age of 8 years.
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Customer Reviews
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Average Rating
"Our green-headed workers tunnelled like mad - beautiful, clear tunnels deep into the gel, criss-crossing and widening into hollows against the sides of the container. Their jaws are relatively large, and the small plastic jeweller's loupe supplied gives you a good view of the action as they bite off the gel and transport it to the top of the container. The blue medium seems to suit them admirably; most of our ants lived just over three months. We also bought the LED base, highly recommended despite the extra cost as it highlights the tunnels to great effect and the blue glow is stunning in a darkened room. We suspect that the near-constant illumination may have shortened the ants' lives, however, as those in the mini-version of this product (purchased at the same time) enjoyed normal night and day cycles and are still going strong nearly a month after the last of the big colony citizens expired. The colony was easy to clean with a cotton tipped swab, though you don't really need to do this as the gel contains fungicides that keep things pretty clean despite the litter of dead ant parts. When all the ants die, you can sluice out the gel under a gentle stream from the cold water tap (any debris deep in the tunnels just flushes out), tip it to drain, and start again.
We bought our Antworks for our 7-year-old son, but everyone else has found it mesmerising. The mail order Harvester ants available to US customers aren't an option, but there is an excellent local substitute, the green-headed ant, pictured here: http://www.geocities.com/brisbane_ants/GreenHead.htm.
Black to casual inspection, metallic greenish-purple in bright sunlight, these are found in just about all suburban gardens here, at the base of garden structures, alongside paths and paving. They are relatively easy to catch, too: we put the point of a bamboo skewer across an ant's path and then tapped off those willing to fall for the trick into the small collection container. Unlike many other garden species (such as the smaller, equally common black sugar ant), the green-headed workers' feet lack the structures that allow them to climb glass and plastic, so tipping them from the collecting vial into the ant farm wasn't fraught with escapees and potentially painful stings. The literature that comes with the Antworks suggests an optimum population of about 15-25 workers.
If you want to see the full life cycle in action, you'll need to catch a queen. There are no commercial retailers of queen ants here that I've been able to discover, but I understand that the winged queens often fall into pools and cluster near windows after nuptial flights on warm evenings. The advice from a local forum is to collect these into a container with a lid and leave them overnight. You'll be able to recognise the fertilised queens in the morning, as they will shed their wings.
In summary: brilliant product, recommended unreservedly."
Alyson, Mt Gravatt East QLD (Mar '07)
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