Oh my G!
Look at this!
I have a very serious problem, a problem that all ant keepers of this species inevitably
go through!
These are red tropical fire ants, a massive colony named the Fire Nation, with millions
of aggressive, stinging ants.
But imagine my utter shock and horror when tonight, checking in on my Ant Room, home
to my various ant kingdoms, multi-legged goddesses, scaled beasts, dragons, and other creatures,
I discovered that my biggest ant colony of my menagerie was stealthily launching their
ominous and dreaded nuptial flight!
Oh man!
This means that all new virgin queens and males of the colony, emerge from their great
nest to fly into the air to breed!
It's all part of the natural fire ant life cycle, and how new fire ant colonies begin.
The only problem is, my semi-aquatic paludarium ant farm here, the Selva de Fuego, is an open
top enclosure for best ventilation, with a barrier to keep the fire ants from crawling
out and into my home, but the design doesn't really account for flying ants, which were
completely free to leave their enclosure!
Oh boy!
Today, watch what happens as the Fire Nation launches their annual mating flight, giving
us the perfect opportunity to take an incredible and intimate look at how fire ants breed,
the key colony members involved, and what I have to do to stop them from creating unauthorized
fire ant nests in my room!
Some of the stuff I came across and discovered about fire ants while making this video are
as far as I know, pretty undocumented, so keep on watching until the end.
AC Family, this is the episode you've been waiting for, where we enter the Fire Nation
to see what it is like, to be one of them on this annual celebratory night in my Ant
Room.
Once again, it's me against the fire ants, here on the AntsCanada ant channel!
Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel, and hit the bell icon.
Welcome to the AC Family!
Enjoy!
AC Family, behold!
The biggest festival of the year for fire ants all across the nation.
Every time this season comes around, I always end up saying to myself "Oh God!
It's nuptial flight season again!
I completely forgot!", and of course, this year I said the exact same thing, when I saw
this in the middle of the night.
Millions of fire ants, of various castes swarming above ground.
The sight was terrifying, but also pretty incredible!
I couldn't look away from the fire ant hoard amassing before me!
If you were one of these fire ants of the Fire Nation, you'd also be here celebrating
with the rest of the kingdom!
But I, as their ant keeper, need to ensure my home doesn't become the site of multiple
loose fire ant colonies, so I'll get to how I deal with that in just a moment.
But first, let's start with the most obvious question, you're probably asking yourself:
Why is this dude keeping pet fire ants in the first place?
Fair question, and the answer to that is 'cause they're cool!
These fire ants have been quite a challenge to keep over the years, but they are currently
my most successful ant colony of all my ant colonies in the Ant Room, the Antiverse, and
they also happen to be the most famous, having even been featured on Nat Geo, Discovery,
and other big media outlets.
They're kind of the G.O.A.T. of my collection!
The Fire Nation here is composed of millions of stinger-ready ants, living in this 100
gallon half land-half river paludarium, called the Selva de Fuego, which simulates for them
the Amazon jungle, complete with its own automatic weather system.
Each of these ants are only a few months old max, but the one queen who gave birth to each
and every single one of these ants has been with me for over three long years, constantly
laying eggs to keep the population going, living somewhere in the most fortified part
of the territories, the mothernest here.
It's crazy to think that the originator of the Fire Nation, lives in this driftwood palace,
constantly laying eggs, growing this colony bigger and bigger until she dies some 30 yrs
or so from now.
It's been years since I've seen her!
Amazing right?!
If not, ok, perhaps you'll be convinced by the end of this video, or by watching more
Fire Nation videos on this channel.
Be sure to subscribe so you can join the rest of us and follow them!
Alright, the next question you're probably asking then is obviously, what are you going
to do you foolish ant nerd?!
The fire ants are breeding and will populate your room once these flying queens mate!
Well, to answer that, I've first got to explain what exactly is going on here:
This was the perfect time to do a quick brief on the amazing fire ant life cycle!
So guys, get this:
If you were one of these reproductives, a.k.a. alates, meaning these big virgin queens or
male ants with wings seen here, you were born underground, raised underground by your worker
ant sisters, and pretty much did nothing underground but chilled.
No work for you when you're born as an alate, and generally not once do you ever come out
of the nest to experience the outer world, until this very important night!
Over the past few months, the colony has been eating extra food to be able to meet the nutritional
demands of the growing number of alates in the nest, but after tonight the Fire Nation
can finally take it easy with the eating!
Now it's important to know that every species of ant has their preferred nuptial flight
date and time.
For instance, Lasius niger in Europe have their nuptial flights specifically on July
afternoons, and pavement ants at around 5-6AM in the early mornings in mid-summer, and as
for these Fire ants, they fly on a random night sometime at start of rainy season, here
in the Philippines, where I live.
Now, humans don't exactly know what triggers a colony to know when their nuptial flight
time is, but we suspect it's a mix of an internal biological clock, environmental cues like
humidity and weather, and collective pheromones that float through the air throughout a region,
signifying to all colonies of that species to fly.
Pheromones by the way are biochemical messages produced by the ants' bodies.
They're essentially like social media posts that carry very specific messages, and it
looks like fire ants throughout the country have posted, and hit the Trending Tab, that
it's time for their annual breeding rave!
Now everyone of these ants has a job, yes, even the ones who aren't actually doing the
mating.
Now, AC Family, this part will truly blow your mind!
Let's have a look at the three major key players in these ant nuptial flights!
If you're one of these virgin queens, you look like this.
Cherry red, with a large head, powerful thorax, and large rounded butt!
If you're male, you look like this.
Black, more slender, smaller head, very wasp-like in appearance.
OK, so these queen and male alates, are hoping to mate tonight and start new ant colonies
of their own.
Only thing is, once the mating does happen, the males die, and the females have to worry
about pioneering the new colony.
The virgin queens are destined to be single, widowed mothers of millions, that is if they
do get to mate, otherwise they also die in a few weeks time.
The alates all have the strong urge to climb upwards, up the branches and decor of the
territories, and try their best to launch themselves into the air, flying for the very
first time, hoping to mate somewhere away from the nest.
Ohhh I really hope to catch a male and female mating tonight... ahem... for science purposes!
Now as for the ordinary worker ants of the colony, who as you can see far outnumber the
alates, they too have an important role during these nuptial flights!
The workers swarm above ground at this time to assist the alates along, but more importantly,
to protect them at this vulnerable period, because fire ant alates happen to be pretty
defenseless, and are a total buffet for a tonne of insectivorous animals like birds,
reptiles, amphibians, spiders, and even other ants.
So with all of these alates running about above ground around the nest, the last thing
the ants want is a huge bird or animal visiting to eat them.
These stinging fire ants running around madly, seemingly for no reason, are in fact, Fire
Nation home security on patrol!
And I'll tell you what!
I sure as hell ain't sticking my hand into this mess!
Nope!
And Nope!
OK so now that you know the basics, let's get to what I need to do to control this emergency
situation!
First and fore most, I needed to do this!
A light fixated above the terrarium so the fire ants would fly towards it and not anywhere
else in my room.
The alates happen to be like moths, hypnotized and wired to fly towards the pretty light.
This precaution however, does not guarantee the alates will not fly further and mate at
another corner of my Ant Room and start colonies, but it's a good start.
AC Family, welcome to the dating pad!
The area around the lights and away from the nest, just the way they like it when hooking
up.
Here we have gathered, potential bachelors and bachelorettes hoping to hook up!
Ohhh I can't wait to film the fire ant alates mating in 4K... ahem... for science!
I've never actually filmed it before.
And oh, look!
Will you look at that.
It seems we have a couple who is showing some great interest in each other!
They inspect each other with their antennae.
Is this the equivalent of ants checking each other out?
AC Family, what we're witnessing here is the fire ant dating game!
But in the end, ohhhhh it looks like the male doesn't meet her standards.
Other males come to inspect the female and oh, I think we may get lucky this time, or
they might rather.
Later another male showed up.
Oh my!
There were several moments where it seemed like mating was going to happen but in the
end the parties involved didn't end up mating.
How strange.
Another very strange thing I saw was this!
A male ant had strangely become stuck to the light, but look, it looks like his male parts
were prolapsed.
Ummmm not too sure how this happened, but ohhhh... this female seems to be quite interested
in...
OK, time to cut away!
Actually, seriously speaking now, the thing that struck me while filming this was that
the females seemed just as active at pursuing mating.
In my mind, I always figured the males just kind of found the females and sort of went
in, by force if needed, but no.
In the fire ant dating game, the parties are both consensual.
In fact, watching the alates on the dating pad, I was able to get an intimate look at
just how gorgeous the queen alates were.
I had never before been able to film them this closely and examine the gorgeous detail
of their design!
Check out how beautiful this fire ant queen is!
Aren't they just stunning up close?
Do you notice those dots on the top of her head?
Those are called ocelli, tiny eyes, that I guess help them see light from above them.
They look to me like a tiara sorta.
There also seems to be an extra dot on the right there next to the right eye but I believe
that's a mite, because I do see two other mites on her gaster back there.
Yes, ants also have to deal with external parasites.
Perhaps these are the friendly phoretic mites, though, hoping to just hitch a ride to somewhere
new.
So, I stayed up and waited all night hoping to catch some ants mating.
I noticed that alates that didn't nail their landing at the dating pad, ended up falling
into the Selva de Fuego's river.
But don't worry, fire ants naturally float, the duckweed offered ample places to gather,
there were many places to climb back to land.
These fire ants were masters of the elements, and it's part of why I love them so much!
But in regards to this quote-unquote emergency situation, I knew if I saw dropped wings anywhere
in the morning somewhere on the floor, it meant I was in big trouble.
Well, AC Family, you won't believe it, but the next morning this is what I saw...
All alates were nowhere to be seen!
Looking into the river at the spot where the alates were gathering on the duckweed, not
an alate in sight.
It seemed they had all retreated back into the nest at sunrise.
Looking around the ant room, there were no dropped wings anywhere, tell tale signs that
any loose queens had likely not mated.
Perhaps alates had flown out the open windows?
Who knows?
But surprisingly enough, the ants never flew again after this night.
It seems this was a one time deal this year, and we were lucky to catch it right on time,
to experience it all together!
I just love getting to witness things like this with you guys!
Any unmated alates will end up dying eventually of old age sometime this year in the nest.
It's actually the third year in a row that the Fire Nation here has had their nuptial
flight in my Ant Room, and luckily no fire ant queen has ever established a colony in
my home.
I believe this is because the only places the queens can suitably create a nest, is
in any of the terrariums in the Ant Room, but there's no way the other ant colonies
nor creatures would allow a queen to infiltrate their territory, without eating her anyway!
Fire ant queens can't dig burrows through treated wood floors, and all areas in my home,
are generally too dry for the queens to establish colonies properly.
Plus my place is full of geckoes and spiders that would eat them up in a snap.
Everywhere outside of the Ant Room is air conditioned pretty much all the time, which
would kill the queens and any workers in a matter of hours.
So luckily, the answer to what I need to do to keep the fire ants from creating new colonies
in my home every nuptial flight, is nothing.
I actually don't need to do anything, but watch this miraculous event that happens every
year around the world, with different species all year round.
If you ever wondered how ants reproduce.
I'm bummed we didn't get to catch the ants actually mating, though... ahem... for science
purposes!
AC Family, did you enjoy today's episode?
I couldn't believe we were just on time to capture this once a year event!
Let me know what you guys thought.
Also, the stories of the ant colonies of the Ant Room continue as we have a look at another
ant kingdom a lot of you have been asking about, so you know what to do!
Smash that SUBSCRIBE button and BELL ICON for notifications now, so you don't miss out!
And don't forget to hit the LIKE button every single time, including now!
It would really help a lot!
Speaking of ants, it's officially nuptial flight season in the Northern Hemisphere,
and a lot of you are catching queen ants now, and in case you didn't know, we've got all
the top of the line ant keeping gear for you ant keepers at all levels from beginner to
advanced, as well as a tonne of new and exciting products for the ant keeping community not
available anywhere else, so head on over to AntsCanada.com, and browse through our shop.
We ship worldwide, and offer full email support if you need us.
We also have ant colonies with a queen available in most regions, so go check us out and pick
up your ant farm kit and ant gear today!
If you're new to the channel, and want to catch up on all your AntsCanada Lore, feel
free to binge watch this complete story line playlist here, which traces the origins of
all the ant colonies of the ant room, so you can follow their stories and better appreciate
how these ant kingdoms came to be, and why we love them so much!
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you'd like to watch deleted
scenes from today's episode of life in the Selva de Fuego and the Nuptial Flight, as
well as brief video updates and surprise guests, so do check it out!
And now it's time for the AC Question of the Week!
Last week we asked:
Name one creature living with the ants in Olympus.
Congratulations to HellCat who correctly answered:
Baby Millipedes
Congratulations, HellCat, you just won a free e-book handbook from our shop!
In this week's AC Question of the Week, we ask:
What was I looking for, the following morning, to tell if queen ants had mated in my room?
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free e-book handbook
from our shop!
Hope you can subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST.
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It's ant love forever!