PNN

 




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Entomologist Dr George McGavin and leafcutter expert Prof Adam Hart will embark on an ambitious project, something that's never been tried before. They will show us a hidden world. It has taken six months from planning to the final project. They've built a new home for one million of nature's most extraordinary creatures - ants. They fascinate us, they build complex, organized societies and we've always drawn parallels between their world and ours.
So what can we learn from ants? To find out scientists brought a working colony of leafcutter ants from the tropics of Central America to Glasgow. They've recreated their nest so they can see inside and for one month they're going to capture every aspect of their lives. They'll track them; they'll listen to them and get right up close to them. They'll also go beyond their own ant metropolis to meet some of the most impressive ants

on the planet and discover the surprising ways in which ants are helping us solve global problems. What ants can achieve is astonishing. This project will show their world as has never been seen before and reveal what they can teach us about ourselves.
Glasgow is not the natural home for leafcutter ants, but over four weeks the science center there will play host to this ambitious project. The goal is to unlock the secrets of the ant colony. In the wild the leafcutters dig huge underground nests. Scientists used the ants' natural design to inspire their own creation. But the leafcutters need more than just a nest, they also need food. Scientists built them a whole environment where they'll be able to search or forage for food as they would do in the wild. They will let the ants loose over this whole new world they've built for them, and over the next month they're going to be really interested to see how they take control of it and how the colony develops.

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