LIGHT ART

Abstracting Ant Trails into Light Art

How a forgotten plate of cat food inspired a design pattern

While visiting family in Mānoa, Hawai’i, I woke up to find this very active ant foraging trail outside on the deck:

Foraging left over cat food. (source: J. van Saders)

I fed the outside cat the night before and had forgotten to remove the “empty” dish. The local tropical jungle environment is home to large colonies of Argentine ants that constantly forage for food. They readily found the leftovers and established a busy foraging trail for transport to the nest.

These small ants are super-social, forming immense colonies (with multiple queens!), sheltering in any protected space. In this case, it was between the folds of a closed deck umbrella, with a string of party lights running 20 feet to a large bamboo plant. They were using the power cord as a highway into the jungle, equivalent to 3 miles long if we were their size. The colony’s foragers had no problem locating the forgotten food source 15 feet away in the other direction from their home base.

Linepithema humile “Argentine ant” (source: modified from Wikipedia)

The foragers create a pheromone-scented trail that guides their co-workers to any discovered food…