From the tallest skyscraper to the most intricately designed museum or structure, architecture is equal parts art, science, and mathematics. But some of the world’s most experienced architects live right in our gardens.
Click start to play today’s Word Search, where you can spot terms from art and architecture.
Despite having no blueprints, no staff and no idea of what the final, finished product should look like, ants and termites build intricate, enormous homes. In fact, according to a 2016 report by National Geographic, black ants can build gigantic underground metropolises with interconnected chambers and corridors.
In a 2016 study published by US-based National Library of Medicine, a team of researchers from Paul Sabatier University in France found that black ants can even build a primitive form of staircase or ramp to connect the different levels of their underground cities.
To study their process, the researchers placed 500 black ants in a large Petri dish, covered with a layer of soil. In a matter of hours, the ants started building by picking up small soil particles, shaping them into pellets and piling them into regularly spaced pillars. By using their own body as gauges, the ants would stack the pillars up to four millimetres in height – their own body's average length – then stop building vertically and extend the roof horizontally.
The researchers found that the insects would write their architectural plans right into the very walls of their buildings, as they were constructing it. They would do this by impregnating the soil pellets with a kind of pheromone that attracts other worker ants. The signal was an indication to keep adding soil at those specific points.
But none of the ants seemed to have any idea what they were eventually going to build, and the researchers would often find ants breaking down their structures and building them all over again. Yet, the ants consistently followed simple building rules, creating chambers, galleries, and helical ramps in massive interconnected structures – all without a plan or large brains.
What do you think of ant architecture? Play today’s Word Search and let us know at games@gulfnews.com.
