Since October 2022 a colony of 300,000 leafcutter ants (Atta cephalotes) can be admired in the Bush section of Burgers’ Zoo (Arnhem Zoo) in the Netherlands. They were kept behind the scenes for over a year before being moved to a world class scenery where they show their particular behaviour as if roaming freely. So, no plexiglass tubes for these critters through which they carry fresh cut leaves to their nest. No way. A network of interconnected telephone poles and wires allow the ants to travel at eye level of the visitors between food source and nest. In the nest these highly social insects have worker-ants chew up the leaves that are harvested and feed the resulting chew to a fungus colony that serves as food for the ant’s larvae.

Permission for use of the song Land Grab granted by Eric Vloeimans, composer. This song is part of the original soundtrack that was made specially for the nature film Wild Port of Europe by Willem Berents. See also the trailer of the film: https://paradisofilms.nl/Movies/wild_port_of_europe/ Check out the music of Eric Vloeimans: https://www.ericvloeimans.nl/