But now AC Family, some shocking news!
They always say great things come in threes.
The Black Dragons of El Dragon, these Diacamma ants of The Shire, and at the celestial birth
of these kingdoms was also born another epic ant kingdom!
AC Family, behold, the Shire's twin domain known as, the Grove.
That's right, another ant colony!
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Enjoy!
As ant keepers, it can sometimes be easy to feel like gods, dieties in complete cosmic
control over a universe in which live thousands or even millions of precious lives under our
care.
After all, we as the ant keepers actively control the environments our ants live in,
we control their food, we control their life events, and like omniscient beings managing
all aspects of their universe, we set up the stage to induce them to do what we want them
to do, like move into a new home we took the time to create for them.
For the most part, ants can be predictable doing exactly what we plan for them to do.
But as you may have seen many times on this channel, sometimes it's when we underestimate
the ants, that the ants completely shock us!
This is exactly what happened to me with this ant colony I am about to introduce to you,
which managed to disappear without a trace, and believe me, you will want to keep on watching
until the end for the big shocking and amazing revelation!
Our epic ant story begins here, in the Grove, a tropical forest groundscape I fashioned
and designed with care, to be the future home of our third new ant colony this year.
It contained some attractive Peperomia and Maranta vegetation, with attractive pieces
of driftwood, along with a cute miniature species of tillandsia.
A great red rock cliff made a statement at the center of the Grove.
I couldn't wait to introduce our new ants into these lush, virgin territories.
In last week's video, I gave you teasers in our hidden video as to what this special new
ant species we'd be introducing to the channel is, providing you clues in the form of a riddle.
So AC Family, very quickly, let's revisit the riddle:
In the night, you'll find them hunting, When it's cool and moon is out,
Once seen in Bornean jungles, these ants without a doubt...
Are likely found where you live, in holes near hills of dust,
They're hated by the world, But completely loved by us...
These brand new ants are special, they're natives, not a tramp,
Can you guess what new ants, shall be setting up their camp?
I was delighted to see that a lot of you, AC Family submitted some very worthy guesses.
Let's see if you got it right!
Within this test tube lies our new, fledgling ant colony waiting to meet you.
AC Family, it is with immense pleasure and excitement that I introduce to you our new
precious friends.
Behold our brand new...
Carpenter ants.
Look at how gorgeous they are!
So many workers!
Here you'll see workers of various sizes, and they tend lovingly to healthy brood piles!
And that right there, nestled cozily in the middle of all of them is her royal highness,
their queen.
Just magnificent!
I just love their rusty orange, brown colour.
As indicated by the riddle, this particular species of carpenter ant is mostly nocturnal,
which is true for most of the carpenter ants native my particular region of the world in
Southeast Asia.
At night, many insects emerge when it's cooler which also means better feeding, so these
ants are indeed night owls.
We actually saw some impressive carpenter ants in a previous live stream on this channel,
of a night time trek through the Borneo jungle last year.
What's amazing about this particular genus of ant is that they are found pretty much
worldwide.
I am certain the majority of you out there has seen a carpenter ant at some point in
your lives.
Sadly, many carpenter ant species, as their name suggests build their nests in wood, making
them very notorious house pests, often leaving their piles of sawdust beneath their nest
entrances, as they don't eat the wood unlike termites.
But for ant keepers, they're a universal favourite because they're large, easy to keep, common,
and are even polymorphic, meaning their workers come in different sizes and shapes!
Just take a look at the various sizes of workers seen in this starting ant colony!
We have large majors with bigger heads and more slender minors with small heads, and
pretty soon, we can expect the massive supermajors to arrive!
Oh, I just can't wait!
They are a very diverse and widespread genus, and are generally not classified as tramp
or invasive ants in the areas they are found, but rather play important biological roles
in the ecosystems they belong to.
So, AC Family, there you have it.
The ants that will be setting camp in the Grove are our new Camponotus ants, our new
carpenter ants.
They'll need a name, too, guys so you know the drill!
Leave your name suggestions for this colony in the comments and I will choose my top 5
favourites for us to vote on in a future video.
Now, I've been keeping carpenter ants my whole life, and I am very familiar with their care,
so naturally I was confident these ants here, were going to be a breeze to care for, but
little did I know these ants were about to give me the surprise of my life.
It was time to move them into the Grove.
Now these particular carpenter ants whose queen and starting workers were collected
from my area, were found living inside a rotting bamboo stick, so I tried my best to duplicate
this habitat in the Grove, by fixating a hallowed out bamboo stick right up against the glass,
in hopes the carpenter ants would move into here where we can still see them.
My feeling was that this was going to be easy and the move would be straight forward.
The upper portion of the Grove was already lined with a layer of fluon barrier to keep
these carpenter ants inside.
AC Family, are you ready to do this?
It's time to move our brand new ants into their new home.
I placed the exposed test tube inside the Grove, making sure the opening of the test
tube was close to the area where I had hoped the ant colony would move into atop the hallow
bamboo, which I covered on the outside with black paper to make the inside of the bamboo
nice and dark.
Alright, and now to remove the cotton.
Here we go 1... 2... 3...
The ants seemed reluctant at first.
Come on ladies!
Come out.
Trust me, you will love it here!
Finally, the workers decided to wander out and step onto Grove territory, and surprisingly
directly into the darkness of the hallow bamboo!
I couldn't believe it!
This was too easy!
I told you, I knew carpenter ants didn't I?!
This started an entire chain reaction, with the message of a cool new home spreading throughout
the colony, and the ants began to pick up and relocate.
Workers carried brood into the bamboo hallow, and in less than 20 minutes, the entire ant
colony had moved in.
Checking the test tube, and I was pleased to discover it had been almost completely
evacuated with remaining workers urging stubborn ants to move in with the rest of them into
the bamboo and bringing back remaining leftover brood.
This move was too easy and I already knew keeping this new carpenter ant colony would
be enjoyable.
That was until I decided to peek into the bamboo hallow.
You won't believe what I saw.
AC Family, our carpenter ants had vanished.
What?!
Where did they go?
I literally watched them move the entire colony into the bamboo!
I looked around in all possible crevices, under, and the ends of the bamboo.
There was no sign of our new ant colony.
Where could they have gone?
I tried my best not to panic.
They had to be in there somewhere, right?
I assumed that eventually, come feeding time, I would see workers foraging and I could easily
just follow them to wherever they were nested.
Night fell, and on the first night, I placed in some of my sweetest, most irresistible
honey and a pre-killed baby cockroach.
There was no sign of carpenter ants.
In fact, despite leaving food out for the ants every single night, there was no sign
of ants anywhere.
After 3 days of disappearance, I was really concerned, then a week went by with no ants
seen anywhere, then two weeks.
When almost three weeks went by I was losing hope.
Had the ants gone into some kind of remission due to unsuitable habitat?
I was so sure they were going to love the Grove!
Were my food offerings not right?
Perhaps the temperature or humidity of their home?
Maybe they were dying out due to unfavourable conditions I didn't take into consideration.
Could they have escaped?
My mind went wild thinking up the most dire of scenarios, and I was close to completely
tearing the Grove apart in hopes to find our ants.
Suddenly, I received flash backs of searching for our Titans, desperately digging through
the Garden of Eden.
Should I try going to ground to search for our new ants?
Ultimately, I decided to hold back a little bit longer.
One day, I decided to water the plants of the Grove as I realized in my complete worry,
I had actually forgotten to water the plants over the past few weeks, and AC Family, will
you believe this?
As I did it, I realized that some of the water was draining down a very discreet and diminutive
opening in the ground beneath the great rock cliff at the center of the Grove.
There was a hole here!
Suddenly, some movement caught my eye.
To my utter surprise, behind the rock I saw our missing carpenter ants, who were now surfacing
to avoid the waters entering their nest, which I now knew was somewhere beneath this great
rock cliff!
Wow!
They were here all along!
How did they get here and how did they survive so long without food?
So many questions, but I was totally relieved that our carpenter ants were actually alive
and well all this time!
And soon look who else decided to make an appearance: her royal carpentry highness herself,
the queen.
Man, these ants even in this state of rained out nest protocol, were absolutely beautiful
to watch.
Look at how their exoskeletons just glisten in the light!
It was then that I also noticed that some of the workers had fully extended gasters,
just filled with stored food!
Oh, so this was how the colony was surviving all this time!
These ants had repeletes!
Special workers designated to be living food stores for the rest of the colony!
The ants must have sent out workers discreetly on some nights to consume some of the food
I left out for them, and deposit the predigested food into these repletes via regurgitational
mouth to mouth transfer, an awesome thing social insects do called trophallaxis.
How clever of them!
Now, I make sure to feed them near their nest opening, and this time, if I'm lucky I actually
catch them eating!
But the one question that remained unanswered was how did the ants teleport from the bamboo
to their location under the rock?
Well, last night, I randomly decided to place food on top of the bamboo, just to make it
not so easy for the ants, to make them work a bit, and to my surprise, the ants came,
but they emerged from within the bamboo!
Ah-ha!
this told me, that on the night of their move they must have also begun to excavate a tunnel
underground, that they dug eventually all the way to beneath the central rock cliff!
Wow!
This means they did all of that within 20 minutes!
Before the final workers were evacuated from their tube on the night of their move, the
majority of the colony was already deep in the soil and far from our view.
They completely hacked us, AC Family!
Now that is a display of incredible digging speed, and also a great reminder to me that
perhaps my idea of being the Lord of the ants is not an accurate depiction of our real relationship.
My relation to the ants I care for is more of a partnership, where I provide the ants
with the things they need to survive and they offer us an exclusive peek into the workings
of nature, but not on our terms, on theirs.
They choose what they want to do, where they want to go, what they want to eat, and when.
I was totally ok with this relationship, and I reminded myself that as long as I remembered
that ant keeping was a partnership, the ants would continue to satisfy our deepest intrigue
for nature voyeurism and curiosity.
And speaking of this delicate and important partnership, it seems one of our biggest ant
colonies on this channel has been long deserving of their own territory upgrade and expansion,
and many of you have also shared this sentiment!
AC Family, you guys demanded for an update on the most famous and long-standing ants
on this channel: the Fire Nation, our massive and ravenous fire ant colony.
These ants are the OG's of the AntsCanada ant channel, and it was time to give them
a new home.
And so AC Family, I would like to introduce to you, a great new kingdom where fire and
water shall meet!
AC Family, behold!
The "Selva de Fuego", the Jungle of Fire!
Here we go, AC Family!
Things are about to heat up!
Our very own Fire Nation is about to move into a brand new upgraded home, the largest
paludarium setup I've ever made, and trust me, you won't want to miss this huge fire
ant episode so hit that subscribe button and bell icon now to be notified, and hit the
LIKE button every single time, including now.
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here if you would just like to watch
some super satisfying, extended play footage of our new Camponotus ants moving in and feeding.
Trust me!
It's super relaxing and therapeutic watching the ants, so go ahead and give it a try!
You never know what you might find in these hidden videos.
Wink.
Also, I would like to plug my new daily vlogging channel for those curious about what I do
in between these weekly ant videos.
Daily vlogs of my travels around the world and often contains a lot of science and biology!
Alright and now it's time for the AC Question of the Week!
Last week we asked:
What makes Diacamma ants different from Bullet Ants?
Congratulations to, well, I don't know how to pronounce this username 陈灯强 but here
was the post and I have left a response to it!
Anyway correct answer was:
Diacamma ants are different from bullet ants because they
are in a different genus and Diacamma don't have queens﻿.
Congratulations ant lover, you just won a free e-book handbook from our shop!
In this week's AC Question of the Week, we ask:
What does polymorphic mean?
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free e-book handbook
from our shop!
By the way guys, for those of you in North America and Europe, the season to find queen
ants has officially started!
If you wanna keep ants and don't wanna go completely high tech, check out the easy to
use ant farms and ant-keeping kits we offer at AntsCanada.com.
We've been designing and making ant farms for almost a decade and ship all our products
worldwide, with full email customer support if you ever have any questions.
I would love for you guys to keep ants with me!
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!