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 Insectucational >Classroom Ant Activities |
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The features that make Insect Lore’s AntHill™ an Ant-friendly habitat also make AntHill a terrific habitat for your classroom! • AntHill is the world’s First living ant habitat designed like a real ant’s home • Super wide base makes tipping over a virtual impossibility! • AntHill’s unique “cross-cut” design with flattened tunnelling side and rounded foraging side gives two different perspectives on ant behaviors • Secure snap-to-lock vented lid • Large interior airspace helps controls condensation, ensuring a longer life for your ants Use AntHill™ and these in-class activity ideas as a starting place for ant-ucation with your students — and don’t stop here! Come up with some super new ideas of your own! Prediction and Observation Exercises (having students write their ideas in an Ant Journal is optional, but recommended!) One theory of ant behavior is that worker ants elect a “supervisor” to lead them as they tunnel and search for food. Some supervisor ants make better decisions than others! Discuss with the students which method for disposing of sand would be easier: to bring the chunks to the mouth of the AntHill and drop them to the bottom of the rounded side, or to walk them to the bottom of the rounded side before dropping them (and then walking all the way back up the AntHill to return to work!) — the easiest course of action should be obvious to the students, but it isn’t always clear to the supervisor ant! Predict what your ants should do, then observe how your ants drop their tunneled sand: from the top, bottom, or even somewhere part way down the AntHill. What do you think will happen if we place a few bread crumbs at the bottom of the AntHill? What will the ants do with it (will they take the crumbs into their tunnels, or tell their friends to come to the food source and eat there)? After a few days, feed your ants at the top of the AntHill, near the entrance to the tunnels. How does their reaction differ, or does it? Place some bread crumbs at the bottom of the AntHill, but outside of the AntHill glass, where the ants can see it, but cannot get to it. Will they notice it, or not? If they do, might this prove that ants find food by sight? And, if they don’t, might this prove that they find food by encountering it by touch with their antennae? If we place a few drops of water at the mouth of the AntHill, what will the ants do? What if the water drops are at the base of the Hill? Is the ants’ reaction different to the water than it was to the food you’ve placed in the AntHill? Hey, This Doesn’t Smell Very Appetizing! A week or so after you’ve observed how the ants react to food placed in their AntHill, try this interesting experiment. Get two “large” bread crumbs — about the size of tiny peas. Find an anthill near you (maybe somewhere on the school playground) and, with a pair of tweezers, lightly rub one bread crumb on the ground where the ants are walking. Have students make predictions about which bread crumb the AntHill ants will prefer, and how the ants will react to the one that’s touched the playground anthill, and why. Then place the two bread crumbs into your AntHill and observe how the ants behave. As a follow-up exercise, try the experiment in reverse: touch a fresh bread crumb to the mouth of your AntHill’s tunnels, then place it near the playground anthill. How will the playground ants react? Will they behave any differently than the AntHill ants? Once you’ve experienced a complete cycle of ants tunneling in their AntHill, refill it with new sand and ants. Then, tilt the AntHill slightly. Predict what the ants will do — what difference, if any, do you predict this will make in how they tunnel? As an alternative, refill your AntHill with new sand, this time inserting one very small piece of hard candy into the middle of the sand-area. Then, before you add the ants, predict what they will do. What difference, if any, do you predict this will make in how or where they tunnel? Night Time Western Harvester ants forage during daylight hours, and retreat into their tunnels at night. How much darkness must the ants experience before returning to their hill? Have students make predictions, then test by placing a box over your AntHill to darken it. The forager ants, thinking that it’s now nighttime, should re-enter their tunnels. After 5 minutes, lift the box to see if they have. If they haven’t, give them an hour or so to return to their normal routine, then cover the AntHill for 10 minutes. Continue the process of testing and observation until you find the minimum dark-time that signals all the foragers to return to the tunnels. Night time Alternative: Refill your AntHill, but this time, cover half of the flat side with a dark piece of construction paper, taped to the outside. Do you think the ants will prefer to build their tunnels in the darkened area more than the exposed area, or will there be no difference? Observing Percent & Fractions What percent, or fraction, of your 25 ants does the supervisor ant set to tunneling work, and what remaining percent/fraction are sent to forage for food sources on the rounded sides and base of the AntHill? The average is about 5 ants foraging and 20 ants digging (20% foraging and 80% digging, or 1/5th foraging with 4/5th digging) but your AntHill ants will have a percent-ality of their own! How do your classes’ ants percentages/fractions differ? How does the number of foragers to diggers change as the tunneling work nears completion? How much of the sand will the ants remove from the flat side of the AntHill? 1/3rd? Half? Express your prediction as a percentage or a fraction. When the ants have finished digging, determine how much was actually removed by measurement of the surface area, or by removing the sand and measuring into containers.  Have a creative classroom idea or ant-ucation activity you’d like to share with other teachers?Email it to me, Doctor Entomology, at doctor_e@insectlore.com! |
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