I found another remarkable ant vase. This one has a charming surprise inside.

It's a harvester ant!

Is it silly to have an ant making bread? I assure you it is not. Harvester ants crush the seeds they find and make them into a paste known as "ant bread" I suppose they don't bake it though...

Vase by Patricia Jones Jemez of Pueblo NM. She made many ant themed vases.

etsy.com

(www.etsy.com)

@goaty

Ants haven't figured out pottery that we know of yet. But they do sculpt clay:

Indian Harvester ants, Pheidole sykesii create levies around their nest entrance so that when it rains the flood waters do not enter, but rather flow around it while they stay dry underground.

They build in response to the water so you can tell which direction the water comes form during the rains based on the height of the walls.

@goaty

I think these nests show how they are related to other wasps. We just get to see the things that winged wasps make more often.

@futurebird oh yeah, absolutely! like, that's straight up mud dauber type stuff!

@goaty

I once read the most interesting story online about a small town with a dark secret. Everyone in it looked like a human but was really some kind of bee or wasp.

Then a family of yellow jacket people moved in and everyone was suspicious of them.

But the "mud-dauber woman" had a pottery studio in the tiny downtown which I just thought was a charming little detail.

@goaty

I once read the most interesting story online about a small town with a dark secret. Everyone in it looked like a human but was really some kind of bee or wasp.

Then a family of yellow jacket people moved in and everyone was suspicious of them.

But the "mud-dauber woman" had a pottery studio in the tiny downtown which I just thought was a charming little detail.

@goaty

Ants haven't figured out pottery that we know of yet. But they do sculpt clay:

Indian Harvester ants, Pheidole sykesii create levies around their nest entrance so that when it rains the flood waters do not enter, but rather flow around it while they stay dry underground.

They build in response to the water so you can tell which direction the water comes form during the rains based on the height of the walls.

@futurebird @goaty

Oh this has suddenly reminded me of a movie, I think from the 90s, in which some intelligent bugs from the rainforest who are really good mimics, disguise themselves as human, to go live in a human town. I think the idea is that they want to do research on the creatures who are destroying their habitat. It was wuite an oddball film that stuck in my memory but I can't remember anything else about it. Let me think

@futurebird @goaty how tall do these levies go?

@goaty

Ants haven't figured out pottery that we know of yet. But they do sculpt clay:

Indian Harvester ants, Pheidole sykesii create levies around their nest entrance so that when it rains the flood waters do not enter, but rather flow around it while they stay dry underground.

They build in response to the water so you can tell which direction the water comes form during the rains based on the height of the walls.

@goaty

Ants haven't figured out pottery that we know of yet. But they do sculpt clay:

Indian Harvester ants, Pheidole sykesii create levies around their nest entrance so that when it rains the flood waters do not enter, but rather flow around it while they stay dry underground.

They build in response to the water so you can tell which direction the water comes form during the rains based on the height of the walls.

How do they make it dense enough to not wash away at the base? Surely ants aren’t heavy enough for effective particle compaction ?

!! Do they drywall-fit the grains together? @futurebird @goaty