Ant Under The Microscope 🔬

Last night my partner said to me he had found a specimen for me. It was odd for a slightly big ant to be crawling on my desk, let alone an ant at all. It must have been fate. So I quickly grabbed a petri dish so my partner could capture it. I was a bit scared the ant might find a way out so I taped the edges. As I was doing so, the ant would charge right at me each time I turned the dish, snapping those slightly big pincers at me.

Of course my aim was to make a permanent slide out of it but I didn’t want to do it with it alive and kicking. So I placed the petri dish into the freezer to put the ant to sleep. Plus this is more humane to do.

Due to the specimen being large, I needed to make a well to mount the specimen within. I didn’t have any PVA glue to create the walls, so I used what I could find that was near me. It wasn’t the best to use a sponge like material to create the walls because air bubbles just kept appearing in the mounting medium. But I had no choice. As you can see from the photos below, a few large bubbles formed after drying.

Instead of showing a series of photos of the microscopic view, I thought I would film it and create a few GIFs instead. Hope you'll enjoy it as much as I enjoyed filming it. It may take a while to load them but I wanted to share the experience of viewing the specimen under the microscope.

In regards to the below GIF, I was pretty amazed at how thin the middle joining part was between the two main body sections. I am guessing this is the hip. It makes you wonder how the ant carries itself with all that weight on either side.

Here the GIF below, I am guessing was we see here are the the veins in the rear section. I also adjusted the iris diaphragm so you could see more of the details inside.

Among the prepared slides I had purchased, there was one of an ant. Comparing that ant to mine, my ant is more than double the size. Also those pincers look like they could cause some real pain. Overall I am glad this ant came onto my desk some how. Maybe it was Soju who brought it up. It is very interesting to prepare and view.