Who else gets the creeps when they see ant colonies?
Those creepy-crawlies instantly give you goosebumps and the thought of getting bitten makes you want to stay away.
Especially with the fiery red fire ants.
Fire ants like to build their colonies in warm and dry fields. They are known to be highly invasive since their population can increase and can extend throughout the ground. Their stings are also excruciating and irritating for humans and can sometimes be fatal.
They build such big colonies that control and prevention are often left to experts.
Their mounds can grow up to seven inches high and 24 inches in diameter. One nest can contain 100,000 up to half a million ants inside it. They build their mounds in an elaborate maze-like pattern, drilling tunnels down through the ground.
This beauty to behold was cast by artist Anthill Art.
His identity has been hidden since he started in 2013. All we know (and as the name speaks for itself), he makes art by pouring molten aluminum into anthills.
He also creates molten art with mushrooms, slime, and fungi.
In this video, he shows one of his most fascinating works, one that even went viral.
He often starts his YouTube videos showing the viewers how big the mound is. In one of his videos, he explained that itโs important to surround the area with sand to seal and stabilize the cast.
He added that the sand should be as compact as possible so no aluminum leaks out.
After sealing it with sand, he started pouring the molten aluminum.
You can slowly see smoke coming out of the sand. Thatโs how hot the aluminum is, and no fire ant can survive that for sure.
Once he thinks heโs filled the colony down to the very bottom, he leaves it to cool.
Once it has cooled down, itโs time to dig out this precious aluminum art.
He first scrapes out the sand that he used to surround the colony mound. Then, he starts digging the soil surrounding it and then digs deep into the ground. That way, he can assess how deep the aluminum cast is.
He scrapes off more soil out of the cast and the earth around it.
At times, he digs more soil out to loosen the cast. On other occasions, he sprays water using a pressure washer so the soil will soften. Then he uses the shovel to take the mold out carefully from the ground.
Now itโs time for the big reveal.
He takes the cast from the ground and sprays it even more. This helps clear out the soil stuck in between. To clean it further, he brushes it down until thereโs no soil left. And what comes out of this is a beautiful anthill art.
The biggest one heโs made so far was 21 ยฝ x 16 ยฝ inches and weighed 25.3 pounds.
Youโll never know what comes out of it until the final finish. His largest cast looks so beautiful; you can decorate it at home because its finished product looks like a Christmas tree.
See his fascinating work of art in the making in the video below!
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