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Women Digging for Honey Ants and Witchetty

Women digging for Honey Ants and Witchetty Grubs. Honey Ants hang from the ceiling of chambers their family dig out of the earth. The tunnels into the chambers are long and complex. That means the Honey Ants have to be tracked, and then the women use informed guesswork based on experience to decide where to dig. The process can take hours of very hard work, but the ladies are always completely rewarded when they find those delicious ants whose abdomens are full of sweet honey. Witchetty live in the roots of specific trees, and after it rains, they move up the chambers in which they live, to avoid drowning. Digging can be slow and complex. Women check the base of trees to see if there is any cracking on the upper root bases. The cracking is a way of telling if there might be witchetty living in that root. The process can take hours of very hard work, but the ladies are always completely rewarded when they find those witchetty grubs.