Oh no!
AC Family, looking into the nest now, it was completely empty.
The Polyrhachis ants were all gone!
What happened?
And shortly after their disappearance, something absolutely mind-boggling happened that left me speechless.
What is this?
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Enjoy!
Before we get to what this eerie mysterious mist is that appeared floating on the waters
of El Dragon last week, we needed to address where our Polyrhachis ants went and what has
happened leading up to this phenomenon.
AC Family, you will want to keep on watching until the end for this epic ant story!
So, I have been showing our past few weeks of videos of our Polyrhachis ants to my myrmecologist
and ant taxonomist friend David General from the University of the Philippines, Los Banos,
a man who has dedicated his life to studying and classifying ants of the Philippines.
Needless to say, he has been super impressed with our video documentation of some extremely
eye-opening footage on these Polyrhachis ants of ours which he said were greatly unstudied.
As you saw in our video two weeks ago, David first mentioned to me that the feeding ecology
of our Polyrhachis semiinermis ants was unknown.
They didn't know what they ate or how they ate it.
We discovered in our video that the ants fed on sweet liquids like honey, as well as insect
parts.
We were even amazed to discover that the queen even leaves the comfort and safety of the
nest to feed with her workers, which is quite interesting and unique since the queens of
most species rarely ever leave the nest unless they absolutely need to.
Finally, we even watched as a worker regurgitated some strange black pellet before diving into
a cockroach leg, meat from which it ripped off during feeding.
David was so intrigued by all of this and said "Wow!
Great work!
You're on your way to accumulating enough observations for a behavioral paper!
Does a paper in Insectes Sociaux sound interesting to you?"
I told him, not so much, but I allowed him to use our footage in case he or his associates
wanted to write that research paper, but our only condition was he had to credit the AC
Family!
Can you imagine, that we together contributed to science?
Super cool, AC Family.
But that's not all!
Over the next few weeks I was also able to shoot some other pretty amazing things, new
AC Family discoveries!
Another thing Dave mentioned to me earlier on was that "The biology of many Polyrhachis
spp is unknown.
In fact, i've never seen them bring solid food to the nest.
They somehow take protein in their crops home to the nest."
Well, two weeks ago, I placed a small spider near their nest and one worker came, picked
it up, and brought it home! Bam!
Another contribution to science from the AC Family!
And check out this Polyrhachis ant pooping!
You don't see that every day, and in literally 1 minute, the poop drop was gone!
The tilladsia plant which absorbs nutrients and water through hair-like structures called
trichomes drank up that nutritious ant poo.
I told this to Dave and he said: "There's a new paper proving ant plants are fertilized
by ant poop on the leaves.
Good show for the tillandsia!"
And good show for us, as well.
We just supported that paper.
But one major thing, scientists have apparently been wondering was which larval instar in
these Polyrhachis ants produces the silk needed to construct their leaf homes.
You see, these ants use the silk webbing produced by their larvae to glue leaves and debris
together to create amazing nests in the leaves of plants and similar environments.
We saw this last week, when our Polyrhachis were nest building.
They took pieces of sphagnum moss and cotton which we provided to them in a container back
home to their nest to glue together and form a cozy sanctuary for the queen and brood.
But, allegedly, myrmecologists have always wondered and haven't had an opportunity to
study the web building process of these Polyrhachis ants.
And so their big question was: Which stage of larva creates the webbing?
Now as a backgrounder, in these Polyrhachis ants, there are 5 larval stages known as instars.
The first instar being the smallest larva and the fifth instar being the last and largest
right before pupation.
After our Polyrhachis ants moved perfectly onto El Dragon Island here, I was really hoping
to catch our ants nest building and help answer that big question.
But now, it seems our Polyrhachis have disappeared.
Where could they have gone?
I checked everywhere!
I searched every plant, root area, and soil.
I checked the waters for drowned ants.
I saw none.
Could our shrimps have eaten them that fast?
Impossible that our new Rasbora fish ate them!
They were too tiny!
Did they escape somehow?
It was all just so perplexing to me.
I sat for a moment and stared into the beautiful chaos of El Dragon's landscape.
Could the Dragon's Curse from the days of the Garden of Eden be back?
No, this is impossible!
This is a science channel!
We don't believe in curses..
Plus, even if it was, it just can't be...
This is a brand new tank, brand new era, brand new home...
Oh no!
Brand new home..?
AC Family, there is something that I did forget to mention.
Some of the soils used to create the island in which El Dragon's plants grow, were taken
from the Garden of Eden.
Perhaps our curse had indeed passed on to these Polyrhachis?
I stared at our dragon's skull which was set on the stone to appease the spirit of the
great dragon who once lived in these lands...
...and then it hit me!
The skull!
I looked into the Dragon's Skull and low and behold, our Polyrhachis ants were there nestled
into the comfy hallows of one of the horns and greatest of all, AC Family look!
The workers were using a larva to spin silk and glue debris to form their new nest gate!
Wow!
AC Family, we just solved the mystery!
These Polyrhachis ants use the fifth instar, the most mature larvae to spin their silk!
High Five, guys!
We just answered the big scientific question, as well as our own mystery as to where our
Polyrhachis disappeared to!
But there was one final mystery left.
What was that eerie mist that appeared last week on El Dragon's waters.
Well, when I discovered the ants moved into the skull last week, one of the things that
concerned me was that the ants no longer could benefit from the transpiration that naturally
happens in plants.
You see ants that build nest homes in leaves benefit from the humidity that the plants
give off during transpiration.
Transpiration is the process by which moisture is carried through plants from roots to small
pores on the underside of leaves, where it changes to vapor and is released to the atmosphere.
So, weaver ants like these Polyrhcachis have natural humidifiers in their homes which is
pretty darn cool.
But in this completely dry skull, I feared the ants might not be able to get the same
amount of humidity as they would had they lived in the plants.
So, I decided to give them something to help solve that.
A fogger, which I placed on a timer to schedule the creation of a mini mist every few hours,
in order to give our Polyrhachis ants some humidity support.
Every three hours, a creeping mist like the breath of a dragon covers the surface of the
waters and keeps ambient humidity ideal for our ants.
Are you ready for this, AC Family?
The best part about all of this: it obscures the path and makes it hostile traveling ground
for our pharaoh ant interlopers.
If any of the pharaoh ants get too close to the mist, they have a high chance of falling
into the water and being eaten by our mosquito rasbora fish.
Many pharaoh ants now turn away when the mist blows in.
I loved watching the mist floating on El Dragon's waters, which by the way, thanks to your votes
is now officially called the River of Dragon's Tears.
As for our shrimp colony living in the waters, they also officially have a name.
You named them the Leviathans.
I like those names!
And of course, last week you guys voted for an official name for our Polyrhachis ants,
and AC Family, I am happy to announce these ants are now called the Black Dragons.
Thank you guys for always being so enthusiastic at participating in these ant videos, and
for being a huge part of their fate.
Thanks to you, we contribute to the ants' success and as we've seen in this video, to
some amazing discoveries in science.
It seems our Black Dragons which continued to work through the night building their new
nest in the skull of El Dragon will be ok.
We'll just have to keep providing them with everything they need and hope they succeed.
This El Dragon paludarium setup was such a huge success.
It made me look over to our Black Dragons' neighbours, the Golden Empire in their Hacienda
Del Dorado.
Our Yellow Crazy Ants have been living in this terrarium for over a year.
Look at all of that chaos!
The Hacienda Del Dorado was in desperate need of a makeover!
We also had to find another way to deal with their exploding population, and I had just
the renovation to solve both those problems.
AC Family, behold.
Alright, AC Family!
Are you excited for what's up next for our Golden Empire?
These Yellow Crazy ants are up for a royal renovation and I can't wait for you guys to
see what I've done!
Tune in next week to catch how I turn their current overrun terrarium into one of the
craziest ant setups I've ever created in all my years of ant keeping!
You won't want to miss it so hit that subscribe button and bell icon and hit the like button
every time, including now!
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would just like to watch
some extended play footage of our scientific discoveries as well as our ground-breaking
discovery of the Black Dragons spinning silk using their fifth instar larvae!
Spread the word, the AC Family saw it first!
Before continuing to the AC Question of the Week, I wanted to plug my new daily vlogging
channel, featuring my daily vlogs for those wondering what I work on between these weekly
ant videos!
And now it's time for the AC Question of the Week!
Last week we asked:
How do beneficial bacteria help keep fish alive in
an aquarium?
Congratulations to, and note this was completely a random selection, Ant Love Forever who correctly
answered
"The fish's waste makes toxic ammonia which is converted by bacteria into nitrite
and then again into nitrate."
Congratulations Ant Love Forever, you just won a free e-book handbook from our shop.
In this week's AC Question of the Week, we ask:
List any of the ant scientific discoveries we made in this video.
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free ebook handbook
from our shop!
Hope you can subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST.
Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, & SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed this video to help us keep
making more.
It's ant love forever!