Antquarium Not So Good For Your Ants - Neatorama

The ever-innovative Japanese have created an ant farm with a nutrient-filled gel rather than the traditional dirt found in most ant farms. It turns out the ants can't function properly in the artificial goo, and end up dead in a short space of time. The Antquarium is great if you want to find who the most survival-worthy ant is, but pretty crap if you actually want to keep them as pets.

Link - via Gizmodo

Update: Fixed broken link & amended the title.

I had one of these a year or two ago.
Ours lived normal lifespans, but since ants have age-based roles that change as they mature from nursing/digging to foraging to defending they only really remain active for the digging phase and sit around for a month or two before they die.

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I had the exact same experience as linty - my ants lived out their lives just fine in the Antquarium (actually they survived far longer than ants in many of the traditional ant farms I've had), though the last month or so they really didn't do very much, I felt bad about that. What is the supposed evidence in support of the claim that Antquarium kills your ants? I tried clicking the link but only got a 404 Not Found error...

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My sister and her husband and kids have one. I don't think it's called "Antquarium" and it is wider than the one shown above (rather than tall). The ants have built a long horizontal tunnel and one long 45 degree angle shaft through the goop so far. It certainly seems to be working for them.

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I wonder if that's the same as this; http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/6fd6/

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Of course they don't live long. They're not really for serious ants rearing.

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I got one called AntWorks as a X-mas gift... got my big fat ants which lived for about 3+ months. One ant lived for 6 months before it died. I don't think the gel kills these ants...

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I like the Tokyomango blog, but the observations of one person don't prove that this ant aquarium is a failed concept.

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I wonder if anyone here is going to come out screaming for the poor ants like they did with the squirrel catapult.

OMG ANTS ARE PEEPLZ 2!!! :)

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it's like a Tamagoshi with no buttons, but real death. Cool!
Can they do that with dogs?

:S

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This is no good for say a colony and brood because the gel kills the brood (larvea, pupea, eggs). even if you had a queen they wouldn't and shouldn't last long because you ants require alot of protein that the gel doesn't have also. The gel is tough and alot of ants can't dig in it. The ants will never forage because they live in food. This product makes ants die a unmeaningful death because they did not do any good for their colony.

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