Little Colony — Ant Farm

EVERY LAND,

ITS OWN ANT

In the meadow, garden ants tend a herd on the plants for its honeydew, and see off a visiting ladybird. In the desert, honeypot ants hang from the ceiling of the honey room as living jars that swell as they are fed. In the rainforest, a young leaf-cutter colony carries green sails home from the shrubs to a fungus garden it grows underground.

And in every colony, once it is big enough, broad-headed majors hatch and stand guard at the doors through the night.

EVERY ANT HAS A NAME

Pip might become your best forager; Maple your hardest digger. The youngest ants nurse, the oldest forage, and each of them lives a whole life. Follow any of them through the nest, zoomed all the way in, or go and find the queen.

TEND,

DON'T COMMAND

Drop a pinch of sugar and foragers catch the scent and gather. A forager coming home with sugar or honeydew passes her drop to a nestmate just inside the door, and it travels down the nest mouth to mouth. Your touch matters — but the colony decides. That's the charm: it's alive, not scripted.

A WORLD THAT BREATHES

Days pass, the sky turns, the colony sleeps at night (drop midnight sugar and watch them stir). Rain soaks the soil and leaves fresh seeds. Most mornings a dead fly or beetle lies out, and several ants carry it home together for the larvae. A caterpillar stops to eat the herd's plant until the ants see it off, unless it is a common blue, which they tend for its sugar.

A rival scout gets escorted out by a wall of workers. When the colony is grown, winged princesses and males fly at dusk; a young queen lands, sheds her wings, seals herself in and raises her first workers alone — and the mother colony carries on.

ON YOUR HOME SCREEN

A widget shows your colony as you left it, lit by the hour of your own day.

YOUR COLONY'S STORY

Replay your colony's whole history as a 15-second timelapse — every shaft, chamber and mound, from day one — and share it.

OUR PROMISES

• Your colony never suffers for your absence. Nothing ages, starves or is lost while the app is closed. Close it for a month; the colony sleeps, safe.

• Zero ads. Ever.

• Free forever. One optional supporter pack: three more lands, the desert and the rainforest each with its own ant, and the tundra. The meadow colony is whole and free.

Built for people who watched an ant documentary all the way to the end and thought: I wish I could keep one of these.