colonies for real, in Vila Ruiva
Ants digging tunnels in real time. Bees in a live hive. Wasps you'd normally avoid. This is Cappas InsectoZoo: living colonies of social insects, watched up close, no glass between you and what's happening.
The place is Vila Ruiva, a village in the concelho of Cuba, in the Alentejo. It's not a theme park or an exhibition with laminated panels. It's a human-scale project, with groups of up to fifteen people, where the visit is guided and the logic is different: understanding how these societies work, not just looking at them.
The termite colony is probably what you least expected to see, and what'll hold your attention longest. The engineering of their structures, built by animals that measure millimetres, is the kind of thing that changes the scale at which you look at the Alentejo around you.
what's inside
- active colonies of ants, bees, wasps and termites
- visits by prior booking only, small groups
- a completely different scale from any conventional zoo
- rural Alentejo context, Vila Ruiva, a few kilometres from Cuba
