Scientists excavate underground ant city in Brazil

Sophisticated: Scientists reveal concrete casts of the circular chambers and roads connecting them(Source: CNTV.cn)

Experts poured ten tonnes of concrete into holes on the surface – which served as air conditioning ducts for the ants – to expose the tunnels by solidifying in the space.

It took ten days to pour the material down the labyrinth of channels, which covered an area of 500sq ft and extended to 26ft below the surface.

After a month, scientists, led by professor Luis Forgi, began digging and revealed the incredible city described as the ‘ant equivalent of the Great Wall of China’.

Leafcutter ants, which can produce similar colonies in a space the size of an acorn, have created such societies – all governed by a queen – all over the Americas.

The leaf-chewing creatures are understood to form the second most complex societies on Earth after our own.

A single queen will collect the 300million sperm form males before she sets up her colony.

Then, her spawn – whose size will determine their function and future caste – will go about building and collecting vegetation.

Source:news.xinhuanet.com