......and this year with help from google earth and online reports of my area which is close to a couple of thrusts one terrain anomaly that I found has the possibility of being a strike & dip. I have also learned to look for any small things outside the normal local landscapes such as change of vegetation etc.....All the best to you on your diamond quest...
LOL.... I NEVER disturb an anthill. There's an old indian thing about not taking rocks from an anthill unless you leave something behind to replace them. Also, some of those harvester ant mounds are as much as 50 years old....digging into them would be a travesty in my mind. I make an effort to keep my karma clean. So, I just look at the surface, occasionally running my hand LIGHTLY over the surface to turn the rocks. That works well enough for prospecting. Most of the gems are too small to have any value anyway. Oh...one more thing about the anthill gems. Most of them are NOT dug by the ants. The ants gather them from the surrounding area, and haul them back to the nest....sometimes taking them into the mound. When I first started this quest, I wondered about that very thing. Did some internet research and found a woman's Master's Thesis on that very subject...really interesting. She put rings, of different-colored glass beads, at various distances around the mounds and then tracked how long it took the various colors to show up on the mound. She did that for hundreds of mounds. Also distances out to as far as 150 yards. I tried it myself on a mound out back of my house. Took only 3 hours for glass beads at 6' to show up. I also saw one ant take one into the mound. So, these anthills provide a really good way to see what minerals are in the surrounding area. This woman felt the ants were genetically programmed to bring back the heaviest object. It had to do with getting the "most bang for the buck", when factoring in the energy spent to forage. Heavier objects tend to resist weathering better, and stay on the mound longer, thus providing more "protection" for the mound. The mound is hollow and has many rooms. The ants eat seeds, and need to often dry them to prevent spouting. They dry them by moving them, into the mound when the mound is warmer and dryer than the nest. They also move the ant larvae into, and out of, the mound to maintain the correct temperature. It's vital to the survival of the nest to have the mound protected from the elements.
