| Audience Participation Cards |
| Question and comment cards are available for visitors to fill out. The cards are posted on the wall and jANeT, the Nurturing Specialist types in the answers each day. Some fifty cards were received during the first week of the exhibit. Visitors of all ages are responding to the cards. |
| Selected cards from Week One: 28 January - 5 February 2000 |
| Your Question:
What are you guys going to do when your done with the Aunts?
jANeT's Answer: Go on a big long picnic. The ants will be returned to the laboratory that they grew up in. |
Your Question:
How much weight can they carry?
jANeT's Answer: I read in a book last night that an ant can carry 50 times its body weight. This is like a person carrying a car. |
| Your Question:
Why are ants so busy? jANeT's Answer: Ants have many jobs. Some jobs are: attending the queen, grooming eggs 7 larva, moving larva, assisting eclosion of pupa, grooming pupae, feeding larvae, retrieving food, guarding the nest, guarding food, excavating the nest, and general cleaning. |
Your Question:
Do you like ants? jANeT's Answer: Yes, I like ants alot. They are are amazing animals. Watching them both here and in my backyard, they give me lots of faith in how the world works and hope for the future. |
| Your Question:
What kind of art is this? jANeT's Answer: This installation has a variety of media represented. There is photography, digital computer graphics, performance art, audience participation and general construction and fabrication work. In general it is a mixed media installation. The ants also are a huge part of what "kind of art" this is. |
Your Question:
How long do the ants live? (signed by Phoebe) jANeT's Answer: The worker ants live up to nine months. the queen ant can live unto twenty years in some species. Male ants live only long enough to mate and then they die. |
| Your Question:
Where do ants go to the bathroom?
jANeT's Answer: Where ever they want to. Look for little squiggle lines on the bottom of the boxes. |
Your Question:
What are (does) color full little rocks, like food?
jANeT's Answer: They are rocks. They keep the ants from drowning in the water dish. |
| Your Question:
What would you do if they had gotten out?
jANeT's Answer: I would have figured out where and how they were getting out. I would stop any more from getting out and put back as many as I could pick up that were on the table area. All others get vacuumed up. |
Your Question:
Why do you do this?
jANeT's Answer: My job here is to take care of the ants.I really like ants and when this opportunity became available, I was very excited to be able to spend the lunch hour taking care of the ants and answering these cards. |
| Your Question:
What will you do with ants when your done with the ants?
jANeT's Answer: These ants are part of a bigger collection. They are kept for educational and scientific studies. They will go back there when we are done with the show here. |
Your Question:
What are those big ants in the colony of small ones?
jANeT's Answer: The big ants are called majors. They help protect the nest,food and crush seeds. |
| Your Question:
Where can I get a coat and hairnet like yours for my food preparation activities? Do the ants see colors? Do they know you are in pink? jANeT's Answer: The coat was custom made. Hairnets are available at Walgreens in lots of colors. Don't know about seeing colors - I'll ask them tomorrow. All I know is that I am wearing pink...I don't know if they know I am in pink. |
Your Question:
Do ants sleep? Do they get hyper?
jANeT's Answer: In the big ant book, they called it "idleness" rather than sleeping. Resting is pretty complicated because the ants physical activity affects the community she lives in . I don't know if they get hyper. the can get excited and alarmed when the nest is threatened. Also if it is warm they can move around really fast. |
| Your Question:
Why are you doing this and why aren't there covers on these things?
jANeT's Answer: I like ants. The pieces do not have covers because of the way we designed the pieces. The big table area is the foraging area for the ants. It is kind of like the area above ground for the ant colony. Having it in the open air is also easy for feeding and taking care of the ants. |
Your Question:
What is your favorite ant?
jANeT's Answer: A live ant. |
| Your Question:
Why did God create ants?
jANeT's Answer: Ants basically do alot of the dirty work on this planet. They clean-up alot of garbage, detritus and eat other insects. They also turn over alot of soil. What is a better model of cooperation and the collective? |
Your Question:
Where is the queen ant?
jANeT's Answer: The queen is much bigger than the workers. Look in the colonies with the trees. They are much smaller colonies and she is easier to find. |
| [Amazing!] [Foothills Resort] [Pebbles: Push-Pull-Drop] [Extrafloral Nectar] [Nurturing Specialist] [Original Photographs] [Participant Q & A's] [Before the Show] |