Warning: What you're about to see in this video will blow your mind!
Keeping an ant colony is very much like caring for a growing city.
You starts small, with just a few pioneering members, but over time, you find yourself
managing a booming metropolis with a massive population.
But what do you do when the population of ants reaches a point of unsustainability?
Welcome to the Hacienda Del Dorado, home of our mighty Golden Empire, our huge colony
of Yellow Crazy Ants who are so close to outgrowing their space, resources, and even food.
If you've been following this channel for awhile, you know that this ant empire has
conquered some incredible past events that have only strengthen them.
These ants have survived a mite plague, they've even survived carnivorous plants in their
lands, so today I was about to try something I never ever thought I'd attempt.
The Golden Empire's unchecked population absolutely needed to be controlled somehow and fast,
so I was left with no choice, but to resort to the introducion of a very well-known predator
to help curb their population.
Today, we will be releasing into the Hacienda Del Dorado, a praying mantis.
But will the praying mantis survive against our Golden hoarde.
Who will end up eating who?
You won't want to miss a single action-packed moment, as well as a surprise revelation of
what else I found living inside the Hacienda Del Dorado, so keep on watching until the
end!
AC Family, today we discover just how complex the predator-prey relationship can be in the
world of insects, in this episode of the AntsCanada Ant Channel.
Please subscribe to my channel and hit the bell icon.
Welcome to the AC Family.
Enjoy.
Check out the Hacienda Del Dorado today.
It is amazing to see how much this terrarium has evolved and changed over time.
It seems every month the terrain and relationships between the living things inhabitting these
lands evolve.
What I find the most impressive is the vegetation in this terrarium.
These lands have developed into a magical and wild rainforest!
Check out these vines of the ficus that have carpeted all areas of the terrarium.
It is by far the main botanical monopolizer of these territories.
And what's amazing is that it also has begun to climb and attach itself to the glass.
The roots are so effective at helping the ficus' vines climb that the ficus plant manages
to cling onto microscopic ridges in the glass surface.
With all these plants that seemingly rule this world, it doesn't seem like we have an
ant population problem at all.
In fact, it even seems that there are less ants seen than normal.
But don't be fooled, AC Family, for below all the plant cover working silently but relentlessly
are workers of the Golden Empire.
All these towering plants everywhere have interestingly created a variety of different
niches and sections with their own microclimates and unique spaces within the terrarium, which
the Golden Empire is enjoying now more than ever.
With a closer look at these bare areas, you will see that ant activity is still busy as
usual.
The Golden Empire still never sleeps and is ready to get drastic at any moment.
Their grossly huge population is most evident at feeding time.
Watch what happens, AC Family, when I place a roach into here.
Once a few members are made aware of the cockroach, it isn't long before a mass of ants come ravaging
the cockroach.
So as you can see, this colony which last we checked had 8 queens, but may possibly
have more is still growing and active as ever.
They are actually running out of space, and soon, their demands for food may be hard for
me to keep up with.
This colony is now up to 5 adult cockroaches a night and a jar of small honey every 3-5
days.
That's a lot of food!
So you see, I absolutely needed to cut down their population but in a way that was natural
and humane.
Adding carnivorous plants didn't seem to work in the past.
They only became insectivorous for a short period of time, and the ants eventually started
piling dead insect parts into the pitcher plants rendering the pitcher plants ineffective
when they were in insectivorous mode!
I also found that the pitcher plants created pitchers in seasons, and it was now an off
season.
No pitchers had grown from the stems.
But I know what some of you might be thinking.
Is adding a major predator into the territory of the Golden Empire a wise choice?
After all, a few months ago we attempted the introduction of some giant millipedes into
this terrarium to try to control the plant life, but in the end they disappeared after
that.
We never saw them again, and it has been months since that introduction, so it was safe to
say the millipedes sadly had not survived the Golden Empire.
But hold on.
Ready for the plot twist?
As I filmed the Golden Empire feasting on their roach, a tiny movement caught my eye.
It was a little peach-coloured creature.
It crawled inconspicuously on the surface of the soil, unphased by the ants that clamoured
about.
My goodness, AC Family!
I couldn't believe my eyes.
This was a baby millipede!
The same species of the those that we added several months ago.
In fact, not only did I spot 1, but I spotted several all around the terrarium!
This was amazing!
This meant that not only were the millipedes that we introduced alive in here, but they
also were breeding!
The millipede introduction attempt was surprisingly successful!
In fact, the baby millipedes crawled under and through the ants' legs, and the ants didn't
seem to notice or care about the millipedes being around.
The two species were now living amicably together and sharing living space!
It was just an incredible thing to discover.
OK, before we move on, please leave your suggestions for names for the millipedes in this terrarium
in the comments section and I will choose my favourites for the AC Family to vote on
in a future video.
So you see, it certainly was possible for some major creatures to live in here with
the Golden Empire.
The state of the land just needed to be right.
I believed that with all this lush plant cover, new niches, varied topography, and generally
more places to hide and live apart from each other, it made cohabitation and sharing of
living space a much easier matter for all the inhabitants of the Hacienda Del Dorado.
This was why I strongly felt that if we were to introduce a predator into these lands,
now was a good time to do it, more so than before.
So AC Family, let's meet her, shall we?
Above the Hacienda Del Dorado, awaiting in her own holding cell, was our predator of
choice.
Behold, Hierodula sp., an Asian Praying Mantis.
Isn't she just a beautiful specimen?
Wow!
Our asian praying mantis here is just a juvenile measuring about an inch long.
She is an awesome brown colour, but her species also comes in a bright green variety.
If her abdomen wasn't showing signs of breathing, I could have easily not seen her against a
natural background, as she stood perfectly still.
As the name suggests, they are native to the tropics of southeast Asia and are actually
among the largest of mantises.
In fact, as adults they can reach up to 10 centimetres or 3.9 inches in body length,
excluding extended forelegs.
Perhaps my favourite feature are her eyes!
Just look at them!
Her eye sight is absolutely on point, and those big eyes see extremely well.
Her head is capable of turning 360 degrees allowing her to see all areas around her easily.
They need good vision to hunt.
Mantises like this young lady here are voracious predators, and at this size, she is the perfect
predator to feed on selected members of the Golden Empire, and thereby be a living, natural
population stabilizer.
I chose her for a few reasons.
First, I knew praying mantises were naturally voracious eaters, as they are even cannibalistic
in nature, often eating their own kind!
This meant that she could eat many ants, as this was greatly needed.
Second, I also knew she had the skills and capabilities to survive against the ravenous
Golden Empire within this terrarium.
Take her keen eye sight, for instance.
Not only were those eyes and fully rotating head adept for hunting, but they were also
perfect for avoiding being hunted.
I knew she would be able to spot any approaching Golden Empire worker, giving her enough chance
to escape to safety if needed.
They are also extremely intelligent creatures, and you can almost see her thinking behind
that hypnotic gaze.
I knew she had the brains to get away if she needed to.
This species of mantis is also extremely agile, and inhabits shrubs and trees.
She can jump around twice her body length, especially at this age!
It was for this reason that I installed a network of refuge vines for her, which were
not in contact with the ground, glass sides, nor plants of the Hacienda Del Dorado, meaning
she could retreat to it if she needed to, but the ants who weren't capable of jumping,
would not have been able reach her there.
Finally, I chose this species as a predator for the Hacienda Del Dorado because of her
evolved method of killing.
Of course, we love all insects on this channel, and even do our best to dispatch prey insects
as quickly and humanely as possible.
Those huge, razor sharp spines on the forelegs of this mantis were specially designed to
kill prey effectively and quickly.
I knew that if she were to kill our ants, the death blow would be fast and quick, no
venom, no prolonged agonizing death.
So AC Family, it was time to do this.
It was time to introduce this asian praying mantis, an evolutionary ant-eating machine
to help us control the population of the Golden Empire.
Here we go.
1 - 2 - 3.
I transported the mantis onto a vine branch.
Without a fight, she accepted her new perch.
I held my breath.
Instantly, she spotted the ants moving all around her.
She was clearly awake and stimulated, but she stayed perfectly still.
Over the next hour, I watched as she examined and seemed to study the Golden Empire, who
were obviously not aware of her presence.
All she did over the next few hours was watch and study, but not move.
Can you believe that for almost 4 hours she stayed perfectly still in the same spot, at
which I'd deposited her?
And then finally, the mantis began to move.
Like a stick blowing in the wind, she swayed back and forth, moving bit by bit in such
a gradual manner.
I couldn't believe how careful and patient she was at moving in this way.
It was important that mantises moved like this, because most of their natural prey,
like flies, bees, and butterflies all have very good vision, so moving in this manner
helped them remain unnoticed to their prey.
Their colouration also worked well at concealing their outline and shape in the entanglement
of branches.
All of this was also essential at keeping them from becoming prey.
The mantis eventually stopped movement and remained still once again, simply watching
the ants.
I wonder if she was thinking and assessing whether she was capable of picking off a worker
ant.
I almost felt like she knew that if she was going to go in and feed on the ants, she definitely
couldn't rush it and absolutely needed to take her time and plot out how she could snatch
an ant without alarming the rest of the Golden Empire.
Like a calculating lioness, she studied the ants below her, looking for a solo worker,
perhaps one that showed signs of weakness or unawareness.
Again for another few hours, I sat and watched, waiting for her to make another move, but
it seemed she was going to really take her time.
This is something that the nature shows on TV usually don't show you: the amount of time
and care that is invested in waiting for the opportune moment, and the calculating that
happens during these hunts.
In the mantis world, patience was key.
It was important that she chose the right opportunity to strike, lest she alarm the
rest of the colony and become a meal herself.
She wasn't stupid nor clumsy.
Suddenly, when I thought she wasn't going to move all day, when I almost was not looking,
like a cat she suddenly leaped right into ant territory, at the exact moment I hit the
record button.
And there she was, now standing in a location fully vulnerable and fully accessible to the
Golden Empire, who still hadn't yet noticed her.
She kept her composure, as our yellow crazy ants moved about below her.
My heart was racing watching this scene unfold.
Suddenly, she began to move, again with her stealthy swaying motion, down the stem of
the pitcher plant she landed on, and in that moment, in a flash she snatched a Golden Empire
worker and began to feed.
The worker ant seemed like a tiny meal in her forearms, and indeed in less than two
minutes, she had finished consuming the ant and proceeded to clean herself.
Now we knew, she had a taste for ants.
She was indeed going to be an effective population control for the Golden Empire, but I began
to wonder if she would also compete with the Golden Empire for food.
Sometimes, I feed the Golden Empire baby cockroaches, and so for observation purposes, I wanted
to see how our praying mantis would react to prekilled baby cockroaches.
As soon as she saw them around her she moved in but was careful not to get caught up in
the clutches of the Golden Empire.
One wrong move, and she would have become prey to her own food!
She watched and studied.
And oh no, here comes a Golden Empire worker right now.
Smelling the air with her antennae reaching out, it was evident that the ant had picked
up the possible precence of a guest.
The mantis reared back as the ant investigated with her antennae.
If this ant were to detect the mantis there, she surely would have informed the rest of
the colony and this mantis would have been dead meat!
But lucky for the mantis, the ant decided there was nobody there.
The mantis remained unnoticed.
Suddenly, when the right time came, the mantis spotted an unclaimed baby cockroach and went
in for the kill.
She snatched it with lightning speed.
Like a monkey that had just snatched its bounty, the mantis climbed to a safer area to proceed
to eat the cockroach.
As she ate, I watched as ants began to detect the scent of the dying cockroach and came
investigating around her, but she simply lifted legs away, and at one point even flung an
ant off her nonchallantly.
I was not worried for her survival in the Hacienda Del Dorado at all!
I knew she could fend for herself in these lands, and I was also taking notes.
I was not to feed small prey insects to the Golden Empire, lest she steal from them.
So, my plans were to allow her to reside in the Hacienda Del Dorado until she grew to
a size where she was no longer interested in feeding on ants, and release her back into
the wild, perhaps replacing her with another juvenile mantis.
I will surely keep you all updated on her progress and if she proves effective at controlling
the population of the Golden Empire.
So AC Family, go ahead!
You know the drill!
What shall we name this mantid empress and new habitant of these territories?
Leave your name suggestions in the comments and I will choose my top favourites for the
AC Family to vote on in a future video.
Guys, if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up, let me know what you thought,
and if you're not part of the AC Family yet, hit that subscribe button so you can join
us every week, as we discover more and more the epic lives of ants.
It's ant love forever!
Alright, AC Family, before we continue on to the AC Question of the Week, I'd like to
thank Mr. JP Raguro, a mantid keeper friend of mine who provided me with the gorgeous
asian praying mantis featured in this video.
Be sure to check out his channel in the link in the description box.
Also, I'm currently in an area of very slow internet so AC Inner Colony check here for
the hidden video, but if the icard doesn't pop up by the time you watch this video, please
check back in a few days as it will surely be up soon!
And now it's time for the AC Question of the Week!
Last week, we asked:
List one of the common names of the snake featured in this video?
Congratulations to Kian Gecko who correctly answered:
Common Blind Snake
Congratulations Kian Gecko you just won a free ant t-shirt from our shop!
In this week's AC Question of the Week, we ask:
List one reason why the praying mantis was an ideal
predator to control the Golden Empire's population.
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could 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!