Guys, behold!
The new island paradise I call the “Jungle Gym”, a beautifully crafted island of trees,
sticks, and plants, to be the home for a very special ant colony of ours.
This ant colony is special, because believe it or not, we’re still waiting to find out
if it is in fact a brand new, undiscovered ant species.
Incredible right?
More about that later.
But this ant colony, as you may have deduced, is very important to ant science, and at the
moment, resides in an AC test tube and Test tube Portal setup, but having them flourish
into a fully fledged and mature ant colony is of utmost importance.
And so, today these unidentified ants will finally get to experience the outside world,
a world crafted and designed just for them, for the very first time in their lives.
It’s time we release the ants onto these virgin lands where they could nest, forage,
hunt, and further grow.
You guys will truly love the ants’ reaction to their new world!
Welcome to the Jungle Gym, my beloved ants!
And to you all, ladies and gents, welcome to the AntsCanada Ant Channel!
Please SUBSCRIBE to the channel and hit the BELL ICON!
Welcome to the AC Family!
Enjoy!
AC Family, I just love introducing a young ant colony, from the little test tube space
they’d always known and grew up in during their first stage of development, to their
very first wide and open home.
It’s one of those milestone ant keeping joys, and you guys will totally trip out at
how the ants reacted to their new kingdom home, but do keep on watching until the end,
as I have a very important question to ask you regarding our beloved scientifically unidentified
and currently unnamed ants.
Now before we go ahead and introduce our ants to their new island, let’s have a quick
look at how the colony is doing now.
As mentioned, they’ve been developing and growing here in their test tube for the past
couple of months.
I initially started with just the queen, who then went on to lay eggs, which eventually
developed into the first generation of worker ants, the nanitics, who helped the queen care
for her brood, as well as taking over the house chores, keeping things clean and tidy.
I kept this test tube away in the dark and undisturbed.
Almost two months later, the ant colony had grown into an explosive young colony with
a tonne of brood!
Have a look at them!
The colony is much bigger and more productive now.
You’ve got eggs up there.
Larvae, and pupae.
It’s amazing to see how organized the ants are, sorting the young by age.
The lighter coloured ants are newly eclosed worker ants, meaning they’re newly emerged
from their pupae, and have exoskeletons which are still hardening.
They eventually turn their signature shiny black once fully hardened, but it’s cool
to see that they’re already working before they’re totally hardened.
There’s the queen checking up on things, before heading back to her resting spot here
away from the light.
At this point, she no longer has to worry about caring for her young, as her workers
take care of everything for her.
She just needs to focus on producing eggs for the rest of her life now.
They lick all the young clean with their antisceptic saliva, as well as all surfaces of their test
tube, in order to keep mold and other harmful pathogens out of their living space.
Their test tube was also now attached to an AC Test Tube Portal from antscanada.com, where
the ants would forage for food.
I placed dead insects and honey drops into the test tube portal and the colony would
simply feed from the morsels and continue to grow in size.
From what I’ve seen in their test tube portal, they eat about 50% insects and 50% sweet stuff.
They don’t seem to have a preference for one food type over the other.
They also use the AC Test Tube Portal as a bathroom site and garbage dump area, which
I usually clean up with a cotton ball every few days, but soon, I won’t need to do this,
as their next home will have soil creatures like springtails and mites to take care of
such things.
Now as mentioned, these ants are possibly a new undiscovered species, currently awaiting
identification from ant scientists, but what we do know is that they look nothing like
any of the ant species known to exist in my part of the world, which may mean they could
actually be an undiscovered ant species!
Isn’t that exciting?
The most we know now about their identification is that these ants do belong to the widespread
genus Crematogaster, known for their pointed heart-shaped gasters, which can bend over
their heads, making them look like they’re doing hand stands at times as you can see
here, which gives all ants belonging to this Crematogaster genus, their common name “acrobat
ants”.
Perhaps some of you may have seen acrobat ants in your yard?
They’re all quite cute!
But these special acrobat ants, may possibly be a new species of acrobat ants, so we on
this channel have been looking forward to the colony’s development into maturity,
where my hope is that they reach into the thousands or possibly millions!
But designing a new home for these undiscovered species of acrobat ants would be challenging
because, well, we don’t know much about them.
We’re on the forefront of ant science, here, AC Family, by keeping these ants.
Isn’t that exciting?
I’ve tried a couple times to raise this unnamed species of acrobat ant but failed
both times, only getting to a couple dozen workers.
But this time, we’re at about thirty or more workers and an incredible brood pile,
with a tonne of new eggs on the way, so it does look like we’re doing well here with
these ants.
With the colony now booming with lots of workers, I felt they were ready for their new home,
but with very little knowledge about them, seeing as they’re possibly an undiscovered
species, therefore greatly understudied, the next problem was, how to design that new home
to help them further flourish as a colony?
To help me address this question, I knew I had to look at how these ants live in the
wild, and turns, out they’re quite abundant in my yard.
So AC Family, here’s what I know about them based on what I’ve seen in wild colonies
of these ants.
They love trees, sticks, and twigs, and in fact, I have not seen them nest in soil, but
rather within hollow sticks of dead plants.
Not sure if they also nest within living plants, but we’ll see.
I knew their new home needed to be abundant in climbing areas and plants to match their
preferred habitat in the wild.
They are also quite active and love to run and forage all surfaces they could travel,
so after some careful thought, I, your Creator of Worlds, drew up plans for their next kingdom,
and went straight to work.
Their home needed to be perfect, so we could see this colony succeed at reaching maturity,
and could be the first in the world to learn about them.
Here’s where things get really fun, guys!
AC Family, behold.
The empty glass enclosure into which we were going to build the ultimate island paradise
for our unnamed acrobat ants.
For ant home builders like myself, it’s like a blank canvas to a painter, and in fact,
the time has come to paint.
Time to apply the ant barrier.
This talcum layer, once dried, causes any and all ants to slip off it, thereby keeping
all ants inside the territories, allowing for the entire thing to be very open-concept,
making for the perfect observation opportunities.
Once done, it was time to decorate, and after two hours of work, this is what the new territories
looked like.
AC Family, behold!
The Jungle Gym in full completion, the new home kingdom-to-be of our young acrobat ant
colony.
I just couldn’t wait for our acrobat ants to move onto this island and start running
around.
What do you guys think of it?
Let me show you around!
The island boasts two fat bonsai banyon trees and driftwood, all of which offers the perfect
foraging and running space for our acrobat ants.
The driftwood I chose for this terrarium had a multitude of holes and hallowed out areas
where the ants could nest, if they so chose to.
I tried to create a space that was very topographically diverse, with lots of interesting places for
the ants to climb, explore, hide, and go about their various activities despite the limited
area I had to work with.
The entire island is actually comprised of two pots, to make watering of all the plants
easier.
I’ve decided to call this the Jungle Gym because well, acrobat ants.
Get it?
Alright and now it’s time to move the ants in!
Let’s do this!
First, separating the AC Test Tube Portal and placing it down here, and now to place
the test tube somewhere up high in the trees.
And Done!
And now to remove the cover of the AC Test Tube Portal and placing the whole thing at
a spot where the ants within could easily find the colony nesting above, and just like
that, the ants were in.
Let’s watch!
It didn’t take long for the ants to begin wandering outside.
I could only imagine how scared, excited, and/or curious these ants might be feeling
at this newfound moment of freedom.
You must remember these ants were born and raised only within the confines of their test
tube and Test Tube Portal for their entire lives, so this sudden open air full of strange
sights and smells were definitely a trip for these ants!
These territories were also bioactive.
There’s one of the beneficial mites that would be cleaning up after the ants, eating
their leftover food, garbage, and poop.
I loved watching the ants running around venturing further and further into the uncharted expanse
of the Jungle Gym.
As the ants explored the area around their nest, they would always quickly report their
findings back to the colony.
The ants at the test tube portal were also amazed
by the strange new world around them, and I knew it was only a matter of time before
they would connect and reunite with their colony above.
The bravest ants explored the higher areas of the Jungle Gym, just loving the altitude!
The ants had officially fallen in love with their new home.
This test tube would now be the colony’s hollowed out twig for now.
I suspect the ants will continue to live in here until they feel the driftwood was a more
suitable spot for the colony, or perhaps some other unforeseen nesting space.
We’ll just have to see what the ants decide.
But now that the ants were officially in, AC Family, as is our tradition, it was time
to offer the ants a house warming gift!
Let’s give them a tiny drop of sweet honey, and you guys will love how happy this drop
makes them.
Check this out!
In no time at all, an ant discovers the drop of honey.
And then a second ant.
Watch how cute the ants are as they taste the honey, and their gasters kinda thump up
and down.
A third ant comes a long to taste.
Mmmmm!
The ants take their time filling up their social stomachs to bring these sweet goods
back to the colony to regurgitate up later for colony distribution and eventually feeding
to the larvae and queen back home.
But speaking of the nest, guys, what I found truly amazing was how the ants already were
acting as they would in the wild.
Have a look!
Before the ants kind of never minded the entrance of their nest, never congregating at the opening,
but now, some ants assumed the positions of nest entrance guards, checking every ant entering
through the nest opening, just as I’ve seen them do in the wild.
So interesting that the ants just instinctively knew there was a need for such a job.
Overall, watching the ants enjoying their new home we made for them, as they warmed
up to the space and explored more and more, feeding, and just doing what they naturally
would in the wild, made my ant-loving heart so full!
It made me feel so lucky to be able to witness something that I knew very few actually have
the opportunity to witness.
If you simply take the time to look at the little things in this world, you just might
find something sweet, that nobody else had yet seen.
Alright, now at the start of the video, I mentioned I’d be needing your help and would
be asking a very important question, and it’s this: What should we name this acrobat ant
colony?
Leave your name suggestions in the comments, and I will choose my top five favourites for
all of us to vote on in a future video.
It means so much to me that you guys take the time to participate in these ant videos
and provide suggestions, ideas, and poll entries.
It’s awesome to see so many of you guys leaving comments, SUBSCRIBING to the channel
as we approach 5 million subscribers soon, watching and LIKING every video I put out,
and just all around being part of this adventurous journey of discovery with me, keeping the
beloved ants and creatures on the channel and providing them all they need to live out
their best lives.
You guys are hands down the best community on Youtube!
It’s awesome to see so many of you giving ants, these little creatures that most people
in the world do not notice, or on the other side of the spectrum, notice but only want
to kill thinking they’re all pests, a chance.
The vast majority of ants are important players in all ecosystems, and many, like our acrobat
ants here, still left to be discovered and learned about, help us realize that ants,
like all forms of life are precious, interconnected, and part of the vast paradise island home,
we all call the planet Earth.
So until, we return to the Jungle Gym to follow up on the progress of our unidentified species
of acrobat ants, thank you all for watching and supporting the ants.
It’s ant love forever!
Hope you can SUBSCRIBE to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST.
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It's ant love forever!