ANTSCAPE

We AntScape manufacture high quality formicarium or the best home for your pet ant. We made and keep developing a new formicarium design that fulfill your ants requirement with good display for the best observation activities for ant keepers. We also sell some ant species which is Ant Queen complete with colony for hobbyist. Ant-keeping is a hobby involving the capture, care, and observation of ants and ant colonies.

 

Ant Keeping in Malaysia

Ant keeping has been a common hobby since 1950s in US, but in Malaysia has recently started growing on 2015 until today but the hobby still need to be improvise and need to be introduce to the youth. Ant keepers may observe and documenting ant behavior (in the case of ant is difficult to observe in the wild) and gain knowledge especially to our youth.

 

What is Formicarium?

A formicarium or ant farm is a vivarium which is designed primarily for the study of ant colonies and how ants behave.

 

 

Formicarium history

The formicarium was invented by Charles Janet, a French entomologist and polymath, who had the idea of reducing the three dimensions of an ant nest to the virtual two dimensions between two panes of glass. His design was exhibited in the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris. Janet's invention was recognized by his promotion to Chevalier (Knight) of the Legion of Honour, but he did not obtain a patent for, nor attempt to market, his creation.

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The first commercially sold formicarium was introduced around 1929 by Frank Eugene Austin (1873-1964), an inventor and professor at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. Austin received a patent for his formicarium on June 16, 1931, as well as further patents for its continued development. Austin included whimsical painted or wooden scenes of palaces, farms and other settings above the ground level.

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In 1956, Milton Levine, founder of Uncle Milton Industries, created his own version of a formicarium, reportedly independently from Frank Austin. Levine got the idea when attending a Fourth of July picnic. Levine registered the term ant farm for his product and registered it as a trademark.Austin may not have used this term; in his patents, the formicarium is referred to as an "educational apparatus" and "scenic insect cage", and in the 1936 magazine article about Austin's device, the structure is called an "ant palace". This trademark received notoriety when Scott Adams used the phrase in a Dilbert comic and received threatening letters from Uncle Milton Industries' attorneys, demanding a retraction for the unauthorized use of the phrase. Adams satirized the incident in a later comic strip, in which Dilbert asked for a substitute phrase for "a habitat for worthless and disgusting little creatures", to which Dogbert replied "law school".

 

 

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