I'm sure you can already tell where this post is going
On Friday me and Andrew were called out to a Scottish indoor tropical park named Amazonia. The Job was to retrieve an escaped colony of Atta cephalotes that was believed to have died out over a year ago. Little did I know that I was about to meet the largest Atta cephalotes colony that I've ever seen.
The Great Amazonia Escape by Che Hawkins, on Flickr
The colony had grown to colossal proportions (must have been close to a million ants). Some of the staff mentioned that the ants had constructed this 5ft mound of earth by themselves. You have to respect just how ingenious leaf-cutting ants truly are and their will to survive. It was just like seeing a wild colony in the jungle.
Each chamber that we came across was well protected by the soldier garrisons. They have this wonderful trick of climbing up your shirt, into your sleeves and biting you on the back, armpits and neck. I sure paid the blood price for digging into this Amazonia Kingdom.
We filled up over five buckets of fungus and we hadn't even taken a quarter of the colony.
The Great Amazonia Escape by Che Hawkins, on Flickr
The Great Amazonia Escape by Che Hawkins, on Flickr
Seeing that we had already collected a considerable amount of fungus, it was time to head back to the Ant room and carefully examine the fungus collected to see if we had the Queen. The majority of the fungus collected was white in colour. It's likely that the queen is still deeper inside the nest, surrounded by the new grey/green fungus and fresh brood.
I carefully spooned out the fungus from three of the buckets into large containers and stacked them side by side surrounded by water.
The Great Amazonia Escape by Che Hawkins, on Flickr
After carefully examining the fungus, I'm satisfied that the queen is still at Amazonia. We'll be heading back out to try again soon enough. The good thing is that all the disrupted fungus from our digging will likely be gathered up by the remaining colony workers and placed into a central fungus chamber. Easier digging next time I hope
Lastly, the two remaining fungus buckets have been placed on temporary moats and joined up with sticks to the already tubbed fungus gardens.
The Great Amazonia Escape by Che Hawkins, on Flickr
The Great Amazonia Escape by Che Hawkins, on Flickr
The Great Amazonia Escape by Che Hawkins, on Flickr
The Great Amazonia Escape
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