On this channel, we love watching ant colonies start from scratch, from just a single queen
ant caught fresh from her mating nuptial flight. We watch her lay eggs, which become
her first set of workers known as nanitics, and eventually with some patience and loving care,
the colony explodes into the millions. Well, AC Family, as you’ve read in the title,
I have a new ant colony to introduce to you, well not too new, as I’ve had her for months now.
But one of the most special things about this new colony I’m going to show you, is that according to
my ant scientist friend, it’s a species that isn’t known to live in my country, in fact,
even he doesn’t know what species it is. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m honoured to introduce to you
another budding ant colony, and we just might be the very first in the world to lay eyes on them!
I’ll explain more in today’s video. Welcome to the AntsCanada Ant Channel!
Please SUBSCRIBE to the channel, and hit the BELL icon. Welcome to the AC Family! Enjoy!
AC Family, way back in September of last year, I happened to find a tiny and cute queen ant.
Little did I know, she would turn out to be very special. Now this is footage I took way back
in September two weeks after I placed her into a test tube setup. If you’re an AC Senate member of
this channel, you’ve already seen this footage of her, but you guys will truly love what this queen
and her budding ant colony looks like today! Do stay tuned until the end,
because I’m going to be asking you guys a very important question regarding this queen ant
and colony that I know you guys will want to be part of. Now let’s get started.
Before I show you what this ant colony looks like today,
as well as what I do know about their biology and species, let me quickly cover where I caught her!
As you may know, and as I covered in our last video, we’ll soon be moving to the Ant House,
which is adjacent to a lush bamboo forest, we call Antopia. Turns out this forest hosts a plethora
of truly exotic life, ants and otherwise. In fact, by just surveying the ant species alone,
we managed to make two other scientific discoveries.
The first was this beautiful spiny terrestrial ant, called Meranoplus bicolor. Turns out before
we documented them in Antopia, it wasn’t known to science that this species existed in my country.
We made a similar novel discovery with this arboreal species of ant,
known as Dilobocondyla carinata, which also wasn’t known to exist where I live.
But in the entanglement of vines and branches, I managed to spot and film a small and cute ant,
belonging to the genus Crematogaster, or ants with heart-shaped gasters. It frequented the vines and
twigs of Antopia, often running with their gaster high above their bodies, a very signature pose of
these Crematogaster ants, ever ready to spray their defensive formic acid at any moment.
I loved watching these ants poke in and out of inconspicuous holes in twigs,
which they hollowed out with their mandibles,
spitting out the little wooden fibers from the entrances of their nest. It seemed the nests of
this Crematogaster species consist of galleries made within dead wood, much like carpenter ants.
Now as mentioned, back in September I actually managed to catch a queen of this Crematogaster
species, and sent a couple specimens as well as all the footage I took of the Creamtogaster ants
to my ant biologist friend in order to identify their exact species,
and what he revealed to me was shocking.
The first thing he revealed was that upon examination of the specimens
and comparison with records, it was clear this wasn’t a Crematogaster species,
known to live in my country. In fact, he went even further and compared them to Crematogaster
ant species found in my geographical region in the world, and apparently
nothing came close. He now is tasked to go through the hundreds of Crematogaster species
listed in mainland Southeast Asia, which is just crazy! He says it will take him some time.
This all meant, that we basically have already made our third scientific discovery, and now it
was just a matter of determining whether ot not this Crematogaster ant was actually a brand new
ant species yet to be documented by science! That is where we are currently with this new queen.
Watching her with her new brood batch was truly amazing to me, just knowing that she might be a
brand new species of ant, and even cooler, caught in our very own forest of Antopia! Now this
queen is actually quite small. Here’s a qtip for comparison. Again, this was way back in September,
back when our carpenter ants were just raising their initial brood piles.
I decided to keep her a secret for the time being, just so I wouldn’t steal the spotlight
from the carpenter ants whose journey you guys seemed to really enjoy following at the time.
And so, AC Family, now that you know everything I know about them,
it’s time to show you what the colony looks like today.
AC Family, behold our budding Crematogaster colony. Aren’t they cute?
The queen has been very busy. It’s been just over four months since we caught the queen
and look at all those workers. They’re just adorable. You can see, the colony has a very
healthy brood pile there. The lighter coloured workers are new workers that recently emerged
from their pupal stage. In a few days, they’ll darken in colour as their exoskeleton hardens.
You can see, looking from this angle, the brood pile has a bunch of eggs, larvae, and pupae.
The workers are so loving, as they care for the brood.
I truly love watching them!
So right now they’re in a test tube setup which is attached to an AC Test Tube Portal
from AntsCanada.com, where I feed them.
There’s their garbage pile back there. They’re pretty diligent with keeping their test tube
immaculately clean. I’m thinking they believe this test tube to be like one huge hollow stick.
I love feeding them, and turns out it’s feeding day for this colony.
Dropping in a dead fly. Don’t worry, I know my area doesn’t spray pesticides,
otherwise feeding wild caught flies would be a dangerous gamble.
In a few minutes, the ants were all over the fly!
Look at them chowing down! That’s a lot of valuable protein. What’s funny is,
looking into the test tube, you’ll notice they’ve all pretty much abandoned the brood pile and the
queen to eat outside. A few light coloured ants, the youngest of the bunch stay behind,
which is typical. In the ant world, only the oldest ants are permitted to leave the nest.
But if you look closely, the workers were kind enough to bring a huge chunk of meat
and body parts for the queen to eat in private. How cute! Enjoy your feast, Queen!
And so this is our new colony, AC Family! What do you think of them? The thing I love
about them is that it seems these ants are slow and steady growers,
investing in quality workers instead of mass production. I have a feeling they’ll develop
to become a popular mainstay on the channel as OG’s. What do you think? I truly hope they turn
out to be a brand new ant species. Can you imagine? We’d be able to name the species!
Crematogaster acfamilius has a nice ring to it! Or perhaps Crematogaster antopius.
Now speaking of which, AC Family, at the start of the video I mentioned I’d be asking you all a very
important question about these ants, and it’s this. What should we name this Crematogaster
ant colony? Let’s give them a really cool name! This is actually the first time
we’ve had a Crematogaster ant colony on the channel in about 12 yrs. The last time I owned
a Crematogaster colony was way back when this channel first started back in Canada.
Anyway, leave your name suggestions for this colony in the comments and your AC Senate and
I will choose our top 5 favourites for all of us to vote on in a future video
or perhaps a community tab poll.
This is truly the most exciting part of ant keeping. Discovery! It’s amazing to
think of how much we don’t know yet about what ant species are actually out there,
possibly in our very backyards. To think that we may be on the brink of discovering
a brand new ant species, not yet known to science, is mind boggling, and even more cool,
we now have this super unique opportunity to observe these ants, up close and watch them grow.
I’ve been trying to think of unique ways to house them, seeing as they live in wooden
galleries bored out from dead twigs. In my mind, there are a few possible ways to set them up,
that would more or less, stay true to their nests out in nature. But I also wanna hear
your suggestions, if you have any: What kind of setup would you like to see these ants housed in?
The world of ants is just super exciting, and I’m honoured to be able to experience keeping
these ants with all of you guys! Do stay tuned for what’s ahead for this new ant colony of ours,
and crossing fingers, my ant biologist friend will get back to me at some point
to tell me whether or not, these Crematogaster ants of ours is in fact a new ant species.
Thank you all for watching, and supporting the ants. It’s ant love forever!