One thing about a line of ants....especially for on YOUR grounds... they'd have to be able to be individually moved up or down, slanted, etc to place a line on uneven ground.... yes?
I'm not sure how much of a "tilt/slant" control I can do but maybe simple 20 degree x rotate. There will definitely be a separate ytrans control for each ant on the line. as well as some x and z movement as a group meandering the line a bit as well as lengthening/shortening distance between the ants. I'll probably add an opposite leg up morph(s) so that you can give the appearance of movement for animation.
The "red" ants you are probably referring to are Harvester Ants. We have a dozen or so colonies in our native garden. The LA County Natural History Museum comes by about every two months to collect some for their exhibit and lab work. They also collect black widow spiders. I tell them not to hold back on either and collect as much as they want. lol.
For those unfamiliar with Harvester Ants; they are fairly large red-orange ants that have a very painful sting (
3 out of 4 on the Schmidt pain scale). The pain index works like a Richter scale-- a "2" sting is about 10 times worse than a "1" sting. A "2" sting would be like a honey bee. Yes, I have been stung numerous times by harvesters and even once by a "4", the
tarantula hawk. I didn't see it in a bush I was trimming until it was too late. It was like putting my finger in a light socket for 5 minutes.
I used a lot of very colorful language (and for those who know me, that's very uncharacteristic).
A little bit of native garden medicine, if you get stung and have
Artemisia douglasiana (more commonly known as "Mugwort"). Rub a mugwort leaf on the sting site-- it will offer
significant pain relief. It wouldn't have worked for the tarantula hawk, but it has helped with mosquito bites and harvester stings.
Ps. I used Atlas Obscura's site for the Schmidt article partially to share that site with you. It's a worldwide organization that organizes field trips to interesting places-- anyone can go. We've had a couple Atlas Obscura trips to
our house/garden.