Ant Laboratory

Ant Laboratory is a living ant colony to watch, and a laboratory to study it in. Release one queen into a glass ant farm, watch her colony grow, then follow it out across an island of its own.

Begin with one queen

Choose from six species: black garden, fire, wood, leafcutter, carpenter and harvester ants, each with its own nest, diet and habits. Pick one of six soils for the farm; only the look changes. Release the queen and watch the first workers emerge (the wood ant's solo start is Experimental). Every ant in the farm is simulated: nurses feed larvae, diggers carve tunnels and rooms, foragers follow scent trails and undertakers clear away the dead. Follow one worker close up with the Ant cam.

A living ant farm

Tap Habitat to set the light, the water and the warmth. Choose Bright, Soft or Off, any colour, or up to twice as bright. The mister can water the soil by itself, and a heat mat can hold the warmth. Mould grows where it is damp, tiny springtails graze it, and the ants catch them. Over weeks the bare surface turns green with algae, moss and grass (how fast is Experimental). Keep the soil too dry or too wet for days, or the heat mat too hot, and some brood dies. Adult ants are never harmed by the habitat.

An automatic feeder keeps the colony fed. Tap Feed to offer seeds, sugar, a fly or a cricket, and follow the food home.

Keep it, or let it out

When the colony fills the farm, you choose. Keep it contained, and it grows on slowly for years while it has food to spare, digging rooms across the whole farm, up to about 4,500 ants and brood. Or open an access port to an island grown from a seed. The queen stays in the farm; workers go out through a tube and found outdoor nests linked by trails, among rival colonies. Scouts reach woodland, meadow, heath, dunes and wetland. Zoom from the island down to one ant, or dive inside a nest.

Seasons and weather

A year passes in a little over an hour at 1×. Leaves turn and fall, and a cold winter brings snow and frozen ponds. Outdoors, storms, drought, fire, rivals and predators shape the colony's life. You can call the weather too: on the map, tap Weather to strike lightning where you tap (it kills ants in the open, yours too, and can start a fire on dry ground) or call a downpour that floods the low ground. The ant farm stays sealed and safe.

Study the data

Data opens to Field notes: a record of the colony's measured changes, with every bolt and downpour you call. Charts follow population, births and deaths, jobs, food, climate, ecology and territory, for the ant farm, the outdoor nests or the whole colony. Export the records as spreadsheet (CSV) files. They record a simplified simulation, not real ants.

The lodge

The ant farm stands in a small lodge. Tap its computer to open Data. Tap the radio to play the developer's own soundtrack; it stays off until you do. Turn on the lodge's loudspeaker to hear it on the map too, softer as you move away.

Quiet sounds

Wind, rain, insects, birds, streams and surf follow the place, season and weather; most are recordings the developer made with ElevenLabs. Very close to the glass, you hear the ants. The only music is the lodge radio.

At your pace

Pause, or speed up to 25×. Cinematic mode hides the controls and films the colony: hold your view, tour the ant farm or, once the port is open, the whole colony. While you are away, the colony waits, paused, where you left it. Keep several colonies, each on its own island.

Designed for iPhone Duo: tabletop mode

Folded, the outer screen has the phone layout; open, the inner screen has the tablet one. Fold or unfold mid-game and play carries on. Stand it half open on a table and the colony fills the top half like a window, with the controls and a live dashboard below the fold. Hold it half open like a book, and the buttons and panels keep off the fold.

No ads. No accounts. No data collected.

Pay once. Play offline. Your colonies are saved on your device.