ニューヨーク・タイムズさんのインスタグラム写真 - (ニューヨーク・タイムズInstagram)「When the American Museum of Natural History’s new insectarium opens in New York City on May 4, a half-million leafcutter ants will be the star attraction. The ants are biological marvels, living in enormous colonies that function as a single superorganism. They are sophisticated farmers, collecting leaves that they use to nurture sprawling fungal gardens, which provide food for the colony. To put their agriculture on display, the museum designed a sprawling, open exhibit made from lab-tested, “ant-approved” materials, from braided stainless steel to old-fashioned Legos. Creating the new leafcutter exhibit was a six-year journey that took the museum’s team — and the ants — from a farm in Trinidad, where the tangerine-size colony was collected, to a lab in Oregon, where it grew large enough to fill a bathtub, and then on a six-day drive across the country in a U-Haul van. The ants, which moved into their museum habitat in January, were slow to adjust to their new home in Manhattan, failing to harvest enough leaves to sustain their fungal gardens. “I think this process of them slowly figuring out their way is really beautiful,” said Ryan Garrett, founder of Leaf House Scientific who collected the ant colony and served as a consultant on the habitat. “Day by day we watch them learn.” Tap the link in our bio to take a tour through the new exhibit and to read more about what it took to make the ants feel at home. Photos by @heislerphoto」4月25日 3時07分