Building ‘the world’s most beautiful ant farm’

BY CHRISTY STEADMAN CSTEADMAN@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

While Jacob Lemanski was circling the globe on his bicycle, the only thing he missed was his ant farm. It was one of the few possessions he’d kept before setting out on his adventure. He built it himself, using scrap sheets of plastic and he set a dim light behind it to illuminate the ant tunnels.

Lemanski’s cycling adventure entailed circling the world twice — a feat that took him 999 days, almost three years. Nearly all of his time was solitary, aside from the friendly waves and saying a casual hello to the thousands of people along his route, which consisted of traversing six continents.

During the long stretches of pedaling, Lemanski had a lot of time to reect. He often thought about his ant farm. So, when he returned home, Lemanski, who has a background in mechanical and aerospace engineering, set out to build the “world’s most beautiful ant farm.”

Lemanski created a living habitat with a colorful backdrop of nebulae and stars that reacts to the colorchanging lights built within the frame.

Once built, Lemanski spent many hours looking at it — observing the ants as they tunneled and watching