during the next two decades, Levine would sell over twelve million of them.
(See the complete history here!)
Today, more than 20 million Ant Farm and Ant Habitats have been sold around the world. The product has become a treasured part of American culture, having been recognized as one of the Top 100 Toys of the Century by the Toy Industry Association as well as garnering considerable media attention throughout the years.New space age ant habitats and innovations such as the

AntWorks Illuminated Ant Habitat keep the idea of ants for pets fresh in the minds of kids and adults alike.

Antfarms® and Formicariums can make excellent science projects and are great for educational toys for your youngsters to learn with. Read below for interesting facts about ants and their behavior. We have numerous insect videos and documentaries about ants that may help you to understand them better.

Care and Feeding:
 If you have a gel based Formicarium you will not need food or water as the gel supplies that. Ants will appreciate a drop of honey, sugar, or bread dipped in sugar water, and tiny bits of fruit or vegetables. Very, very small amounts will do; you don't want the food going moldy in the bottle. Ants get water mainly from their food; however, every couple of days you can add a cotton ball soaked in water to supplement the supply Be careful not to knock the bottle over or shake it up; this will destroy the ants tunnels.

• Unless you have dug up or order a queen ant yourself, you will need to replenish your ants from time to time as ants only have a life expectancy of 45-60 days. It is illegal to sell /export a queen ant in the United States and a few other countries because one doesn't want to import or export a queen to a non-native region where indeed the species can run rampant or cause ecological damage.

How to make your own Ant Farm
I'm sick of all these tiny, plastic colorful pieces of crap trying to pass themselves off as an ant farm. They should really be called ant cages or something, because you can't actually farm the ants. No one in America is allowed to ship or sale queen ants (they can in Europe tho). Can you believe that? How are you going to farm ants without a queen? They just sit in those cages, with no purpose until they die! I don't see what the big freaking deal is! I have heard their arguments for why they don't want them shipped around the country (introduction of a non-native species, etc.), and they do have a point, but ants are not really that hard to get rid of and so their threat should be overlooked and those regulations lifted.

Even if you could buy a queen ant, she would just be wasting her time in such a small enclosed environment. She would produce more ants than the aquarium could tolerate in a few months.

I have always had an interest in ants. They are fascinating creatures. Ever since I can remember I have been making ant farms. I like to just sit there and watch them sometimes, and then setup little obstacles for them to overcome. Occasionally have bug wars!

The ant farms for sale on the market do not even have an open top, or a flat landscape for them to hunt food. You can never really interact with the ants or conduct experiments, because you can't reach them. Everybody is so scared of a lawsuit that they don't want the kids even touching the ants. For crying out loud! They are usually Western Harvester Ants. I've been bitten several times. It does not hurt that bad. I didn't even cry the first time I was bit at 5 years old.

The way I make ant farms is the way they should be made, and I hope to get it manufactured someday, but it might not ever happen, so I ask that one of the many toy ant farm distributors in America come out with just one ant farm that is geared toward the serious observer and not just another toy for kids. It doesn't have to be huge, but it's gotta be bigger. At least 8"Wx12"Lx10"H

Here's how you do it? I like mine a little bigger.

1. You take an 18" long x 8"wide x 12" high fish aquarium to be your outside wall.
2. Then you take a 16"long x 6"wide x 9"high fish aquarium to be your inside wall.
3. Remove all of the cheap plastic parts at the top of the smaller aquarium so you can get it clear for glue.
4. Place the large aquarium right side up (the open side up).
5. Place the smaller one upside down (open side down) into the larger one. Glue the smaller one to the bottom of large aquarium, leaving approx. 1" on each side for dirt. (You can also place a light inside the small aquarium for some cool effects)
6. You may want to glue down four 2" strips of glass or something smooth surfaced around the top of the Large aquarium to make it harder (nearly impossible) for the ants to escape.
7. Get some decent tunneling dirt and fill up your new ant farm. Leave about an inch of room from the top.
8. Go dig up a queen and some worker ants and get started.
9. If you added a light inside the small one. You will need to drill a hole for the plug.
   

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT ANTS

1. Like all insects, ants have six legs. Each leg has three joints. The legs of the ant are very strong so they can run very quickly. If a man could run as fast for his size as an ant can, he could run as fast as a racehorse. Ants can lift 20 times their own body weight. An ant brain has about 250 000 brain cells. A human brain has 10,000 million so a colony of 40,000 ants has collectively the same size brain as a human.
    
2. Ants are normally from 2 to 7 mm long, although carpenter ants can stretch to 2 cm, or almost an inch! Ants can be brown, black or red and can have wings or be wingless. They have narrow waists and elbowed antennae.
    
3. They are called compound eyes. The abdomen of the ant contains two stomachs. One stomach holds the food for itself and second stomach is for food to be shared with other ants. Like all insects, the outside of their body is covered with a hard armour this is called the exoskeleton. Ants have four distinct growing stages, the egg, larva, pupa and the adult. Biologists classify ants as a special group of wasps. (Hymenoptera Formicidae) There are over 10000 known species of ants. Each ant colony has at least one or more queens.
    
4. 4. Ant colonies consist of males, females and workers. When a colony begins to grow too large, winged male and female ants leave the colony, mate in flight and then search for a new nesting site, usually in soil, under concrete, or in rotting stumps and wood. Once they find a good site for their new home, they shed their wings and the male soon dies. When the nest has been established, the "queen" lays eggs that hatch into grubs, that pupate into wingless workers. ( Ants go through complete metamorphosis - egg, larva, pupa and adult ) These workers care for the new eggs produced by the queen. Incubation, or hatching of the eggs, lasts from 10 days to several months depending on temperature. Larger ants, called soldiers, are produced for defense and usually have large strong jaws used to protect the colony.
   
5. The common Black Ants and Wood Ants have no sting, but they can squirt a spray of formic acid. Some birds put ants in their feathers because the ants squirt formic acid which gets rid of the parasites. The Slave-Maker Ant (Polyergus Rufescens) raids the nests of other ants and steals their pupae. When these new ants hatch,they work as slaves within the colony. The worker ants keep the eggs and larvae in different groups according to ages..
    
6. Ants have colonized almost every landmass on Earth. They can constitute up to 15% of the total animal biomass of a tropical rainforest; in the Amazon the combined weight of the ants is said to be four times larger than that of the tetrapods in the same area. It has also been estimated that the combined weight of all ants exceeds the weight of mankind.