All the Boomers who bought the original Uncle Milton's ant farms have grown up, and the ant farm has grown up with them. As far as I know Uncle Milton was the single pioneer in the early days of the commercial home ant-farming industry. The kits came with everything you needed including ants, but you didn't get them right away. There was a coupon you'd send off to Ant Central or wherever and they'd send you some ants.
I doubt the ant supply company was extremely environmentally-conscious in those days so they probably sent whatever ants they had on hand. I wonder how many alien ants escaped. Probably quite a few. Also I wonder if the live ants came with a queen. If they did it seems like she'd lay so many eggs that the farm would be overwhelmed in a few weeks, but if there was no queen the colony would be disorganized and they wouldn't live past that generation. I wonder what the story is. I bet Uncle Milton knows, but he's probably ant food himself by now.
Here's a closeup of life on the farm in an Uncle Milton's kit. That ant climbing on the windmill is going "WTF? What's this shit? It's green but I can't eat it or cut it or anything." The other ant is going "White dirt? WTF? Where am I?" "Uh-oh, I think we're in one of those ant farms. See those giant, ugly assholes staring at us? The ones who step on our houses and burn us with magnifying glasses? They're keeping us now." "Oh, GREAT! Screw this...we bust out at midnight." That's what I'd say.
Some time went by and the original Ant Boomers got older and went on to cars and women and work and drugs and whatever, and maybe sales of the ant farms dwindled. So some clever high-tech nature lover came up with the gel system. It's definitely futuristic compared to the old units, but I think if I were an ant farm owner I'd be a traditionalist and stick with the original. I guess this would be okay if you were an ant farm collector and wanted to be a completist. The blue gel is not only construction material but it's also edible. Food and drywall at once...what a concept. I'm not sure I'd know whether to eat the stuff or cut a foyer out of it if I were an ant in a gel ant farm. They could do Hansel and Gretel for sure.
Here's some ants in the gel setup. One ant is going "WTF? What's this blue dirt shit? Looks like those sky-blue popsicles we love so much." The other ant goes "Hey, you can eat it. WTF? Where are we?" Third ant goes "I think we're in one of those gel ant farms. Like Uncle Milton's, only with this blue shit." "At least you can eat it." "Yeah."
This version is marketed to kids in Asia. I guess Uncle Milton's would have never gone over over there. Most Asian kids probably wouldn't know much about what an American farm looked like. Theirs would have to be rice paddies or something.
No matter what kind of ant farm it is, you could look at it all day.
This one's a bit creepy to me. Instead of a farm it has a factory motif. Oh, I get it...ants are
workers. I went to the website and under features it said "Teaches kids to be responsible." Responsible what? Factory workers? If I had to have this one to complete my collection I'd keep it in the closet. It probably has a tiny movie theater that constantly shows "Metropolis," and the popcorn sucks. Yeesh. I'll stick with Uncle Milton.
Over the years many different versions and DIY ant farms came into being. Apparently the boomers still wanted their ant farms and wanted to get creative and go big. I like this picture frame version. Some people made big cubes out of plexiglass and turned them into ant-farm coffee tables. There's all sorts of images of some of these projects if you want to search.
One DIY project is this soda bottle farm. It looks cool but I wouldn't trust it for shit to stay intact. You know that guy who always knocks over the bong at parties? You wouldn't want to invite him over to see your new ant farm. The center of gravity is way too high. I'm all about DIY but I'll pass.
Ant farms apparently made a very serious impression on some people and they took it to the extreme. This is called the "Mant Farm." lol. There's a metaphor there.
For the tech-savvy ant lovers there's this system from AntsCanada. Apparently they make a good living selling modular ant farms. The proper term for ant farm is a formicarium, and I'm guessing these guys probably use that term. There are other companies in Japan that make similar stuff. I'm not surprised. They live in ant farms themselves.
Here they are going through all the crazy tubing. This is high-tech stuff. Again, the ants are going "WTF? Where the fuck are we?" It looks like they're running around inside a circuit board. This is a little clinical. They actually have a dozen specialized habitats made specifically for one type of ant. That's incredible. The AntsCanada guy has really carved out his own little empire.
They even sell these feeding stations. It says that it feeds and waters the ants and it also cleans waste. That I'd like to see. How it cleans little tiny ant turds is beyond me. I tried to find out how it works but I could only find the company's website. It had great photos and it explained step-by-step exactly how it works...in Japanese. I guess the question of how you clean up ant shit will haunt me for life. It does go to show how widespread ant farming is. If someone can make money selling such an exotic piece of equipment just to feed your ants...well, the AntsCanada (I love the name) place talks about "ant love" and they sell t-shirts that say it. They aren't kidding. Who knew?
No doubt...these people are serious. Good for them. Everybody needs a hobby. Ant love. If they made a t-shirt out of it then it must be real.
I'll give it to the AntsCanada guy...he's into it. This is one of his main formicariums. The tubes go out into all of his plastic gizmos and back. The main colony lives under the driftwood just to the left of center, but the ants roam all through the system, and as the colony has grown he's added some of his various habitat systems, and he has extra tubing running all over the place like ant habitrails. Uncle Milton would be green with envy.
He has some great videos on Youtube. They're totally pro-shot and are fun to watch. Well, maybe not for everybody...I guess seeing ten million ants can make some people's skin crawl, but I love it. Ants rock. This colony is made up of Yellow Crazy Ants. Apparently they're a good kind to keep. I'd get those just for the name. This colony is growing by the day, and he chronicles the adventures on his channel. It's also called AntsCanada if you want to search Youtube. It's good stuff. Oh, and they, and presumably all other places, are members of an organization called I think the Global Ant Network, if you can believe that. I don't know the whole story but the stated purpose is to make sure people keep only native species in case of accidental release, like if you build one of those soda-bottle ant farms. That's very cool. It's sort of like Craigslist for ant people. If you need ants you can buy or trade with people in your area. This ant thing is way bigger that I could've ever imagined.
You can still buy an original Uncle Milton's ant farm in 2017. It's exactly the same. I guess they can't improve on some things. They lost the kids on the box and now they have an ant doing farm work instead. At least he's not in a factory. Look at what Uncle Milton started. His humble plastic ant farm didn't disappear...it just got bigger. It's an industry, with machined parts and acrylics and everything. Farm ants got it good these days.
Uncle Milton started something I doubt he could have ever imagined. Once he made that first green plastic windmill he never looked back. Of course he was directly responsible for the relocation of billions of innocent ants, but that's another story. Other people took his idea and ran with it, and now you can watch ants run around under your coffee table if you really want to. The ant farm has come a long way from its humble beginnings. I guess Uncle Milton has gone on to the Great Anthill in the Sky. I wonder if they played that song about the rubber tree at his funeral. That would've been funny. RIP, Uncle Milton. They now have machines that clean up ant shit because of you, and that is just nuts. I wonder what Aunt Milton had to say about all those ants running around all over the house..."MILTON! I'm getting the RAID! Do you hear me?" "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo..."
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