One of the largest ant colonies ever discovered to date stretches over 4,000 miles across Europe and is estimated to number in the billions of ants. The colony shown in the video below; and the picture above, is approximately 500 square feet in size and goes 25 feet into the ground.
In order to be able to see exactly how a colony structure is made up the scientists filled the colony with concrete – 10 tons of it. It took almost a month before they could actually start excavating the site in order to see how it was constructed.
[hat tip to WebEcoist ]