Greetings AC Family, and fellow Ant Lovers! As you know, I’ve recently moved into our new AC
Ant House, within which we’ve built a two storey Ant Room! That’s right, a sort of house within a
house, dedicated to hosting all our current and future ant colonies and beasts of this channel.
Now I wanted to start this new era on the channel off doing something a little different. Often
times, a few of you would ask about certain ant colonies you might have seen in previous videos,
that you may fail to find video updates about later, so I wanted to do a full update tour of
our current colonies and beasts, as well as get your help with one of my termite colonies whom
I suspect might be dying. But don’t panic yet, all that and more coming up in today’s video.
Time to catch everyone up to speed, as well as welcome all you newcomers to the channel with a
full update video on all my ants and exotic pets, here on the AntsCanada Ant Channel.
Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel and hit the BELL ICON! Welcome to the AC Family! Enjoy!
The sun shines into the Ant Room with its warm golden beams, bringing in its
life-giving energy to the inhabitants of our burgeoning Antiverse reborn.
The nocturnal creatures of the Antiverse, Valentino, our Sarong green tree python,
and Jabba the Hutt, our horned frog were prepping for slumber. Our giant centipede, after a night
of hunting roaches, had already retreated below ground somewhere in his personal jungle space,
and tarantula, greeting the morning silent and motionless as always.
But this Ant Room though not completely full yet, was just bustling with life.
One such spot of life being greeted by the morning sun is this forested world we call Aranyani’s
Bend, through which runs a pretty white gravel path. And this path is where the action begins.
Trap-jaw ants traverse the path darting back and forth, working on some secret
project. This young trap-jaw ant colony who recently joined our Ant Room is still young,
so there aren’t a tonne of workers yet, but they have been busy with nest construction. The
colony actually needs a name so AC Family, please feel free to VOTE for their name by hitting LIKE
under the name suggestion you prefer for these ants below the pinned comment of this video.
It seems these trap-jaw ants, named for their bear-trap type mandibles which open
180 degrees and snap shut with lightning speed, aren’t interested in the freshly cut up roaches
I’ve placed into their terrarium. Guess they’re too full and busy with life.
One colony of ants that wasn’t going to pass up a meal, was this fierce pack engaging in a feeding
frenzy within their AC Ant Tower. A freshly chopped up roach kicked its legs, launching
our newest colony of Dracula Ants into attack mode, biting and stinging it where they could.
More and more workers poured out from within their subterranean lair like vampires emerging
from their coffins to feast on the new meal that had dropped in from the skies.
For those of you who are new to these Dracula ants, these ants not only eat insects they kill,
but also suck the blood of their young, hence their name. Once this chunk of meat is killed,
they bring the larvae up to the surface to feed, then take the larvae back into their nest to bite
them and suck their blood. Don’t worry, these blood-letting bites don’t kill the larvae,
they just allow the adult workers to drink. Strange lifestyle, right?
You may notice all the cocoons on the surface. Don’t worry, I checked and those are all discarded
cocoon casings. Empty shells, which means there are now much more workers than before.
This colony will soon need an additional ant farm unit connected to their already existing
home so they could expand some more. By the way, this colony also needs a name so again,
vote for their name by hitting LIKE in the replies of the pinned comment of this video.
Another group of very interesting creatures, though not ants, have been residents of our
Antiverse whom we’ve been following for almost a year now. Termites, nature’s arch enemies of ants,
but still oh so beloved on this channel, have been working on starting up their own colonies.
And while we on the channel are dedicated to farming our colonies of ants and termites,
these termites have also been busy farming their own colonies:
fungus! So these termites are farmers of a special fungus called Termitomyces fungus
which they farm for food, off their poop after eating digested decaying wood. In their last video
we marvelled at their incredible fungus comb, hosting gardens of their Termitomyces fungus,
seen as the white edible buds known as mycotetes, and the fungus’ root structures known as mycelium,
the white fuzz. It was a lush and healthy, promising fungus comb, and our Termites were
well on their way to becoming one of those monster colonies I only saw in nature documentaries. It
was also cool to see the poop from the different types of wood we’ve been giving them. You can
see the darker palm tree wood at the top, and the lighter acacia wood at the bottom.
AC Family, this is what their fungus comb looked like this week. Looking pretty good! I see one of
the royals, the king or the queen, not sure which, sitting up there, and workers all full of digested
wood, processing it inside their bodies to poop out to add to their fungal comb. But AC Family,
as I was looking at the fungus comb, I couldn’t help but notice: Was it shrinking?
Scanning the white path running through Aranyani’s bend,
I noticed something that I found to be very concerning.
Dead bodies, and not just any dead bodies. Dead isopods, Aranyani’s Bend’s resident janitors. It
was very atypical to see all these dead isopods littering the trail like this.
So something was killing the isopods in Aranyani’s Bend! This was not too good, seeing as the isopods
have a very important function in this forest ecosystem, and that is to break down decomposing
material to convert the nutrients to usable food for the plants. Having a healthy colony
of isopods in a terrarium was essential to ensure the lands were bioactive and healthy.
I began to suspect the trap-jaws might be the culprits. Man, if that was the case,
then these ants are savage! They didn’t want to share their space with other critters,
which to me, didn’t make much sense. You see, the isopods don’t compete for resources with the ants,
and in fact, the two organisms are symbiotic, as they benefit from each other’s existence!
That was when I noticed the trap-jaw’s official garbage site and graveyard.
A dead trap-jaw ant carcass lay in rest as the carpet of mold worked on breaking it down. Again,
I could see bodies of isopods also decaying in the wasteland. Along with isopods,
fungus also does a great job at breaking down nutrients to simpler forms from decaying material.
But would fungus be enough to properly bioactivate Aranyani’s Bend, devoid of isopods?
So I suspected that if the termites’ fungus comb was indeed shrinking,
it might be because the termites needed more wood, perhaps a greater variety of
wood? Their current setup was actually kind of weird and funny. It was an island of soil
where I placed the wood. I initially created an island because my idea was
to turn the whole setup right side up once the termites moved out of their birth test tube,
but that never ended up happening so I just went with a sideways setup with an island.
But now that the termites were clearly not moving out and like their home this way, I decided it was
time to better alter the space and also provide the colony more pieces of decaying wood for them
to work on and add to their fungus comb. So that is exactly what I did. First, I added the soil
to extend the platform. Adding soil might also be good for the colony in the future for when
they do decide to expand out of their test tube which they would need to eventually do at some
point. I imagine they would create mounds in the soil to accomodate their nest chambers.
Next, I added in various types of decaying wood, mostly decaying palm wood,
acacia, and other wood that I saw termites in my area were eating.
And done! Alright now they surely had a decaying wood buffet to choose from,
to add to their fungus comb. I couldn’t wait to see how the termites would react to their
new fungus growing medium, and watch their fungus comb bounce back in size.
Now one colony that was doing extremely well was our Blades of Midas, our biggest colony of ants,
known as spiny ants. I did a livestream of this colony last week. The colony continued to work
eagerly on their roach carcasses. They were like a hungry pride of lionesses tearing into that
roach flesh. I watched as a pair of ants carried one of the roach heads back towards their nest.
This colony was about a few hundred thousand workers strong, probably close to reaching a
million workers soon. Their nests whose walls were made of debris collected from
their environment all glued together using silk from their larvae were structures to
marvel at. I love when the ants are able to do what they do naturally in the wild
in a captive setting. It means we’ve totally nailed their home provisions,
something I could only hope for for the other members of our Ant Room.
The next day, I looked into our termite setup to see if the termites had added to their comb,
and this is what I saw.
Man, is it just me, guys or does that fungus comb look even smaller?! In fact,
it almost looked nearly gone. Look, compare it to how the comb looked like earlier this week,
and then now. It’s an obvious change. No! What could we possibly be doing wrong? I considered
maybe filming the comb and exposing it to brief periods of light might be damaging the
fungus somehow? I remember reading a comment once that in ordinary human-farmed mushrooms,
sunlight can damage mycelium. I didn’t know but this was not looking good.
Looking at the trap-jaw’s garbage pile, I noticed a movement that caught my eye.
OMG! Yay! An isopod! It seemed like there were still living isopods in Aranyani’s Bend,
seeking refuge from the trap-jaws underground. It made sense that the isopods were also hanging out
around the trap-jaw ants garbage pile, as they were probably also
feeding from all this valuable decaying trash and perhaps even carpet of fungus.
This gave me hope for the future of Aranyani’s Bend, and the ants that lived inside it.
But, I was sad to see the termites’ fungus comb so clearly different from how it looked just a few
days before. After all our hard work, it seemed this colony was on a scary road to dying out.
Saddened by the news, I looked to one of our other termite colonies who were at a
younger stage. They were housed in a petri dish setup. They were doing so
well! I had recently added some decaying palm tree wood into their petri dish,
and AC Family, look at what I noticed the colony had been working on.
A new fungus comb structure of poop! Awesome! It also looked like some of it was starting to
turn beige, too. It was amazing to see, and man, this colony had so many workers
now. Incredible to think, as well, that all this time, this colony had been sustained exclusively
on the liquified tissues of the king and queen, fed to each worker regurgitated by
mouth. They didn’t have their fungus garden up and running yet, unlike our other colony.
And AC Family, that’s when it occurred to me.
Hey, perhaps the reason the fungus comb looked so different in this colony within such a short
time period was probably because the termites were probably undergoing their growth explosion
stage now, constantly feeding from the comb, and in order for more fungus to grow, the termites
continually needed to add more poop as the fungus was eating it. In effect, I’m sure this constant
adding and feeding causes the termites’ fungus comb to always be changing in shape.
I looked at the fungus comb again, and AC Family, tell me if you notice it, too but
does it look like the fungus comb is growing not so much upward, but outward to the left? Before
it seemed this left addition to the comb wasn’t there. At least this is what I hoped. AC Family,
let me know what you think! Do you think the termites and their fungus garden are still doing
ok and thats its just taking more of an elongated shape now? Am I just overreacting? I sure hope so!
But guys, this is my update of the Ant Room! It’s amazing owning all these setups,
because it’s one thing to look at each setup individually, but it’s truly another thing
to appreciate the collection of setups as a whole, to really see and understand how
nutrients are cycled through a natural space, to see the various players, their functions. How
energy powers the various systems, that bring life, death, and in turn more life, in a never
ending cycle of nature. This to me is the true joy of keeping ants and other wild creatures,
seeing how they all fit into a natural puzzle, beautiful, sometimes savage and scary,
but always a gift. I hope you enjoyed this week’s multi-story episode and update in our Ant Room.
DO let me know if you did, and if you did be sure to hit the LIKE button, as it really helps a lot,
as it lets Youtube know that these ant videos are worth sharing to new audiences,
and if you haven’t yet, do hit the SUBSCRIBE button to join our ever growing AC Family! Until
the next time we revisit the Ant Room to check up on the epic life stories of our Antiverse, thank
you so much for watching and supporting the ants. See you again next week. It’s Ant Love forever!
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