OMG, guys!
I’m still recovering from what I’ve filmed this week.
It all just got so real, so fast!!
OK so, I normally pre-kill my feeder insects when feeding my pet ants, because I just feel
it lessens the suffering of the feeder insects.
But, in some cases I do feed live prey to my pets, for instance when it’s necessary
for the animals’ food to be alive and moving in order to actually perceive them, or as
I’ve done in the past, when the prey can actually live out normal lives and be hunted
by the predator, which is what happens in nature.
So, this week, I’ve attempted to create a neat self-feeding, ethical system, which
allowed the prey creatures, a colony of roaches to live, feed, and breed normally, but also
allow them to be gradually picked off and hunted by my pet fire ant colony, that I knew
needed to satisfy their hunting urges for living prey.
And so AC Family, just a warning, this episode gets intense, raw, and gruesome, as we witness
the instinctive hunting faculties of fire ants at work, in an epic roach hunt!
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Enjoy!
So if you like cockroaches like me, this video will be pretty heart-wrenching, but if you’re
part of the majority of the world that hates roaches and would love to see a roach blood
bath, then this video is for you!
But guys, keep on watching until the end because I’ll be needing your opinions on whether
or not you think this setup I’m proposing in this video, is truly an ethical option
and an effective one for the overall well-being of our ants, because I’m currently… torn.
You’ll see exactly what I mean in a bit.
So if you’re new, this here is the City of Ashes, our ever growing fire ant farm metropolis.
Within it lives the Phoenix Empire, a young fire ant colony we watched grow from just
a single queen fire ant.
But I need to show you this part of town, Hell’s Kitchen, where the fire ants get
their food.
Now you guys named this feeding outworld “Hell’s Kitchen”, and well, despite it originally
starting out as a gorgeous paradise, it has truly been transformed now into a fire ant
hell.
The fire ants completely carpet the remodelled and relandscaped terrain, and watching them
dance upon the ground and carcasses from past meals like this, intimidates me greatly.
Look at them!
Such a scary sight!
Each of these ants are fully equipped with stingers that can immediately paralyze any
creature their size, and cause an intense hot pain for an unsuspecting human hand like
mine!
Now way am I sticking my hand into here, as I’ve been there done that!
So you might be wondering what this is.
Well, it’s some sweet jelly I’ve placed into Hell’s Kitchen as a diversion, so I
could lure the fire ants out of their sugar test tube which they had completely finished,
and needed to be replaced.
After I did, the fire ants came rushing in like crazy to drink from their new sugar source.
Food is basically their #1 priority all day every day… always!
But let me ask you something.
If you were a small insect and were dropped into Hell’s Kitchen here, where would you
hide?
Let’s say you were quick on your feet.
Would you say it would be possible to survive, eat, breed and live normally here despite
the fire ants roaming the lands?
This is what I asked myself as I thought of how I could possibly allow my fire ants to
hunt as they would in the wild, but still give the prey creatures a surviving chance
to live normally.
I’m sure you guys thought what I was thinking: not possible, right?!
Well, that’s exactly why I invented the City of Ashes’ newest installation, which
I’m going to show you now.
AC Family, behold, the Shelfordella Temple Grounds, a zen garden of soft coco fibrous
pastures, leaf litter to play in, and the highlight, a towering temple at its center,
perfect for relaxation and peace if you were, you guessed it, a cockroach.
A colony of cockroach children will be moving in here, and I’ve got a peace offering of
fruit, vegetables, and fish food waiting for them to eat.
I’ll get more into how Shelfordella works, but first let’s move in our cockroach children
now.
They came to us on egg carton delivered to me by a gracious someone in my city who actually
was able to deliver them to me, despite my city’s strict lock down.
There’s quite a lot of them, so I’ll just place them all in, and then I’ll carefully
shake them off each egg carton piece.
And there we go.
Masses of cockroach children were now within the temple grounds.
There were a lot of them!
As soon as they were placed onto the grounds they all kissed the ground, most likely due
to the moisture they were drinking from the coco fiber.
These poor roach children must be so thirsty.
So these roaches are hatchling Turkestan roaches, scientifically known as Blatta laterallis
or Shelfordella lateralis in some classifications, hence their temple name.
Speaking of which, look guys!
The children have discovered the temple and were already enjoying its cool, shadowy promises
of protection.
I loved watching them entering and exiting the temple openings, and even enjoying the
upper floors, as they peeked happily outside the little windows.
Some roaches were also having bites from our peace offering.
Now before we go on, guys, what should we name this new colony of roaches?
Leave your name suggestions in the comments, and I’ll choose my top 5 favourite for us
to vote on in a future video?
Overall, I could tell the roaches were indeed enjoying the lands, and treating it like a
safe haven, where they could live, eat, play, and go about their happy lives as normal,
which was my goal, because what I’m about to show you next is how Shelfordella fits
in to the City of Ashes.
Shelfordella like Hell’s Kitchen made from an AC Outworld from AntsCanada.com, and so
it has two unsuspecting holes, which are currently plugged, but my plan is for both holes to
be connected to tubes which run up to another AC Outworld situated on top of Hell’s Kitchen.
So my idea is that some of the roaches would wander into the tubes, climb up and fall into
Hell’s Kitchen, and because of the barrier above Hell’s Kitchen, the fire ants cannot
access these upper holes and enter the roach safe haven that is Shelfordella.
The roaches aren’t very good at climbing smooth surfaces so once they get to these
holes, they’ll easily fall into Hell’s Kitchen, where the Phoenix Empire could then
hunt them down.
I wasn’t sure if this would work, but it was now time to try!
Unplugging the first hole and connecting the tube, and doing the same with the second hole.
Done!
AC Family, it was time to watch, but I wasn’t prepared for the scene I was about to see!
The roaches were shy to enter the tube at fist, but soon one bold roach decided to rush
up the tube.
My heart began to race.
Emerging from the other end, it looked over the edge.
I held my breath!
Soon, it slipped and was hanging on the edge.
Ahhh!
I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch anymore but decided to keep filming…
Oh!
In it went!
Where was it?
There!
I caught it running across some moss evading surrounding fire ants.
The suspense killed me, as I watched it hide among some moss and then dart away once it
was discovered.
It raced all around Hell’s Kitchen, zigzagging its way through the masses of fire ants that
crawled all around it.
I was quite surprised to see how quick it was on its feet as it effectively avoided
running into surrounding fire ants, who were by now aware of the roach’s presence.
There were times it came so close to being captured, but always seemed to avoid the ants.
I found the roach seemed safest around the edges.
For a moment, I began to wonder if the fire ants would ever end up catching the roach.
Maybe, these roaches were just way too fast for the fire ants.
There were even moments when it could rest to clean itself until it was discovered again
at which point it would run away.
It was kinda like catching a fly.
It was much too fast and could even jump out of sight!
I felt the fire ants kinda didn’t stand a chance to the roach’s speed, that was
until more roach children began to come through the tubes.
Someone must have convinced a gang of roaches to come wandering into the tubes because they
were coming in groups now.
Little by little they all began to fall in.
Some were lucky and decided to crawl back the other way, but most had fallen into Hell’s
Kitchen.
Looking into Hell’s Kitchen, I saw that several of the roaches had been caught and
were now being feasted upon by the ants.
Once the ants had seized a roach there was simply no chance of survival, as one sting
would be enough to neuro-paralyze the roach.
It was a little disturbing to see, more so as I caught roaches running for their lives
around the lands, with fire ants all no pun intended, hot on their tails.
Many roaches showed enormous agility at avoiding the fire ants.
But I knew it was only a matter of time before they would be caught and killed on the spot.
The whole Phoenix Empire had been notified by now of the roaches that seemed to be raining
from the skies and I could see droves of ants were dispatched from the mothernest to join
the hunt.
As hard as it all was to watch, the real intensity was just about to begin, as more and more
roaches made their way up the tubes and fell in large groups into Hell’s Kitchen below.
I watched in horror, as roaches and ants could be seen racing everywhere in a massive life
and death game of tag, and the fire ants were it!
It seemed that some roaches had nowhere to go, as fire ants turned up at every corner!
I sat wide-eyed and humbled as the fire ants masterfully caught roaches and killed them
with a single sting.
Nature is truly metal.
It took seconds for a sting to immobilize the roaches.
As more and more roaches fell in, the fire ants got more and more ferocious, picking
off every roach they could catch!
The sight was a total roach blood bath!
Tonnes of roaches had been killed now, and once they were dead, they were each carried
away, taken through the tubes and back to the nest, one by one for further consumption.
The roaches that had it the worst were the ones who had the misfortune of falling into
the jelly, as the fire ants had a much easier time seizing them to deliver the lethal stings,
after which they could carry them into the depths of their nest.
As more and more roach babies continued to fall in, I began to notice that Hell’s Kitchen
had truly turned into a Hell for roaches.
It was hard to stomach, but I knew and kept having to remind myself that this was a natural
process, and one that would feed and nourish our beloved Phoenix Empire, whose food demands
were growing by the day.
The next day, the roaches within Shelfordella were all sleeping within the temple.
I’m sure there were tonnes of roaches in there.
It didn’t seem the roaches were coming through the tube as much anymore.
Peeking into the nest, I couldn’t see any roaches stashed away anywhere, but two things
surprised me.
One, it seemed to me the amount or size of the brood had noticeably increased overnight!
Well that was quick!
Also, the fire ants had built their nest upward, almost to the top of the Fire Fortress.
I bet they were keeping all those dead roaches somewhere in there, if they hadn’t all been
eaten by now!
So, guys, what do you think of this setup?
First off, do you think this system of feeding is sustainable?
I know these roaches breed easily, and if they continue to breed in here perhaps we
have a solution to a self-feeding system, where the roaches could live out normal lives
within Shelfordella, while also giving our fire ants a chance to hunt for food.
Shelfordella also makes a good gut-loading chamber for the roaches so they’re full
of nutrients before being fed to the fire ants.
But my bigger question is: Do you feel this Shelfordella installment is ethical?
Is this the best way we can feed the ants roaches where both parties can benefit, i.e.
the fire ants get to hunt, and the roaches generally get to live out normal lives when
not traveling through the tubes of death?
I’m not so sure at the moment.
So AC Family, this is where I need your help.
Please take a quick moment to leave your VOTE here, to let me know if you think Shelfordella
should remain a permanent installment within the City of Ashes, or if this should just
be a one time thing that you think was good enrichment for the Phoenix Empire for now
but needs to be removed, because it either isn’t sustainable, beneficial, and/or ethical.
Thank you, AC Council for your input!
If you guys end up liking the self-feeding concept of Shelfordella, and it proves to
be effective for our Phoenix Empire, perhaps I can try something similar to feed our colony
of sapphire tarantulas.
Anyway, whether we decide to keep Shelfordella or not, one thing’s for sure: as we’ve
seen on this channel before, nature isn’t always pretty, pristine, and beautiful.
Sometimes, it’s ugly, chaotic, and scary.
Would you guys agree with this?
Or maybe that contrast of what feels good and what feels bad when we’re watching nature
unfold before us is us not appreciating nature for what it really is.
Some might argue that in nature, there is no good nor bad: life, death, and everything
in between, it’s all just intrinsically good.
I mean, yes some baby roaches were killed, but in doing so the fire ants were able to
put their natural hunting faculties to work and nourish their growing colony in a way
nature had designed for them.
When I look at it this way, I somehow can look beyond my human lens often clouded by
human emotion bias, and more greatly appreciate that the natural world is perfect, balanced,
fair, and always flowing in the direction of the greater good of all.
Thank you guys for watching, and supporting the ants.
It’s ant love forever!
AC Family, did you enjoy today’s episode.
Is it bad that I feel guilty or is Shelfordella an effective way for both feeder roaches and
ants to benefit in the long run?
Let me know, and I’ll definitely value your feedback.
So much more is ahead for the Phoenix Empire and other creatures of the ant room, so if
you haven’t yet, do SMASH that SUBSCRIBE button and BELL ICON now, and hit ALL so you
get notified at every upload.
Also don’t forget to hit the LIKE button every single time including now.
It would really mean a lot to me, guys.
Thank you!
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would like to watch extended
play, uncut footage of the Phoenix Empire roach hunt.
It’s intense stuff!
And guys, did you know that it’s anting season in the Northern Hemisphere, and you
don’t even need to leave your home to start an ant colony?!
You can catch pregnant queen ants from the safety of your own backyard, balcony, or open
window starting this month!
Be sure to visit AntsCanada.com for all your ant keeping and collecting gear shipped to
you in a special package from our ant-loving facility in the USA, so you can get the most
out of your ant keeping experience.
We ship worldwide and also offer full email support if you need our help!
We also have a helpful forum and ant colony trading marketplace on the site.
Visit AntsCanada.com today.
And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week.
Last week, we asked:
What are supermajors for?
Congratulations to Ryan Suleski who answered:
Supermajors help defend the colony and break apart tough spots in their food.
Congratulations Ryan, you just won a free Ultimate Ant Keeping handbook from our shop!
In this week’s AC Question of the Week we ask:
Why was the temple called Shelfordella?
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free e-book handbook
from our shop!
Hope you could subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST.
Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed this video, to help
us keep making more.
It’s ant love forever!