[Rockhounds] Ants use soil physics to excavate metre-long tunnels that last decades

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Ant colonies can descend several metres underground, house millions of
insects and last for decades, despite being made without the benefit of
machinery and reinforcing material. The secrets of these impressive
architectural structures are being revealed by three-dimensional X-ray
imaging and computer simulations, and could be used to develop robotic
mining machines.

José Andrade <https://mce.caltech.edu/people/jandrade> at the California
Institute of Technology and his colleagues set up miniature ant colonies in
a container holding 500 millilitres of soil and 15 western harvester
ants (*Pogonomyrmex
occidentalis*). The position of every ant
<https://www.newscientist.com/article/2276684-ant-species-given-first-gender-neutral-scientific-name/#:~:text=A%20newly%20discovered%20species%20of,Darmstadt%2C%20Germany%2C%20in%202018.>
and
every grain of soil was then captured by high-resolution X-ray scans every
10 minutes for 20 hours.

The X-ray results gave researchers exact details about the shape of each
tunnel and which grains were being removed to create it. The team then
created a computer model using those scans to understand the forces acting
upon the tunnels. The size, shape and orientation of every grain was
recreated in the model and the direction and size of force on each grain
could be calculated, including gravity, friction and cohesion caused by
humidity. The model was accurate to the 0.07 millimetre resolution of the
scanner.


Read more:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2287862-ants-use-soil-physics-to-excavate-metre-long-tunnels-that-last-decades/#ixzz74UO5TaLI