Model of an ant colony
Department of Biological Science at Florida State University pours orthodontal plaster down ant holes, and creates perfect molds of the topology of the inside of an ant-colony.
This is a plaster cast of a large Pogonomyrmex Badius nest.
The nest is 135 chambers and 12 meters of vertical shafts.
The top-heavy distribution of chamber area and spacing is typical for the species, as are the helical shafts and the decrease of chamber size with depth
Link to picture series via betuman
An individual ant is not very bright, but ants in a colony, operating as a collective, do remarkable things. A single neuron in the human brain can respond only to what the neurons connected to it are doing, but all of them together can be Immanuel Kant. Collective intelligence: Ants and brain’s neurons