Check out this video from metacafe of an amazing piece of architecture….an ant hill! After pouring a ton of cement into the ground (actually – make that ten tons) to take to the shape of all the tunnels, a team removed about 40 tons of soil to reach the ant hill. The underground network is an intense system of main tunnels and branching side routes with short connections to decrease circulation time. The planning, as the video states, is so cohesive that it seems to have been designed by an architect. It is phenomenal that thousands of ants could design and construct this system that extends over 50 sqm and 8 meters down. It makes you wonder what other architectural masterpieces are hidden from view…
If you like this, be sure to check out The Truffle, another natural creation, yet this one is man made.
That’s incredible.. it’s amazing how they have all that geometry wired into their tiny brains. Must have killed millions of them pouring all that concrete though.
…”it is phenomenal that thousands of ants” have died due to the foolish curiosity of humans.
Beautiful structure, outrageous way to reveal it: this was a crime.
look, it´s amazing what wild life can do, but this is obviously a genocide, what are you thinking!!? that was the home of thousands of ants, are you nuts!!? it wouldn´t be easy discover that using a sonar or something like that?…common, this is sick in a bad way >:(
Do not confuse nature with architecture. They are opposites.
poor ants :(
c’mon, maybe it was abandoned before they flooded it??
I think this can fall under the ‘science’ column w/regard to filling the hill with concrete. Unless they could’ve used some sort of giant x-ray, killing off everything in the area…
oh wonderful lets kill all those millions of ants just so we can satisfy our curiosity!
I don’t see any ‘lesser’ beings partaking in such idiocies.
Pathetic…really..
Don’t be so radical… It can on the other hand even raise future awareness towards preservation.
It would’ve raised future awareness if it had been something new and previously unstudied- we’ve all been aware of their colonies. This is similar to the excuse Japan uses when hunting whales for ‘studying’.
and the best and only way..in today’s age.. is a concrete pour!!!!!…
absolutely unbelievably incredible to be able to study the spaces and use of negatives.
Amazing… Killing ants is just another farming activity. But acknowledging and preserving their work is what makes this project truly amazing. Great work.
that was amazing…..
wasted opportunity – they should have poured molted gold into those tunnels, and eventually excavated the whole system and hung it from a tall ceiling at a Louis Vuitton Store, and some rich douchebag woulda bought it for his French Riviera Villa.
Fascinating and anyway what’s a ‘few’ dead ants in the name of scientific discovery considering all the humans we have killed since WWII in the name of goodness knows what. Human = dumest animal on the planet.
Should have poured concrete over the scientists digging there, to conserve the idiocy of human.
Incredible structure!
We’ve had some ant-problems here so excuse me for not caring too much about the ants :/
I call BS on the whole thing, how did the concrete get in the air locked tunnels and chambers?