Oh man!
Wow!
I can't believe what I managed to film this week in the Antiverse, i.e. my Ant Room, which
houses a variety of epic ant kingdoms and vivariums, containing a menagerie of exotic
creatures that all live together interdependently, but guys, the next gigantic beasts you are
about to see in this video, that have just made their grand arrival to the Ant Room,
will surely blow your mind, as it did mine!
I have never in my life seen creatures so cool!
You'll see exactly what I mean soon.
Now as some of you may or may not know, back in October, I acquired some new scarab beetle
grubs, the larvae of the world-famous Xylotrupes gideon philippinensis, the giant rhinoceros
beetle.
I created individual soil incubators for them called the Chambers of Sudan, and I was told
that the fully formed adult rhino beetles would emerge from these soils by Christmas
time.
I, as well as many of you, were thrilled!
Well, Christmas came and went, and there was no sign of the beetles, then New Years came
and went, and still, no sign of giant rhino beetles anywhere.
It concerned me because I'd never raised rhino beetles before and I thought I had gotten
something wrong, or perhaps some disaster had struck somehow, so I asked you guys whether
or not I should go in and check up on the beetles.
According to the votes, over 86% of you here on Youtube felt it was time to go into the
Chambers of Sudan and check up on our beloved beetles, and AC Family, what I ended up seeing
is something I'd never witnessed before and something I know you guys will never forget!
And guys, wait until you see what my epic plans are at the end of this video, so do
keep on watching 'til the end!
Ladies and gentlemen, gather round and witness the glory of these majestic mammoths of the
insect world, our new rhino beetles, 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, standing before us are the Chambers of Sudan, specially designed
incubating and growing quarters named after Sudan, the last surviving male white rhino.
They've been moved out of the Ant Room because they are about to undergo a special operation,
which I anticipated was going to get messy.
Each of these chambers contain a cocopeat mulch and chunks of decaying coconut wood
along with the larvae that were to eat all that good stuff, until they grew up into adult
beetles.
But why haven't we seen the beetles yet?
It's been three weeks passed their due date.
Honestly, going into these Chambers of Sudan, I was prepared for the worst.
Dead larvae, dead beetles, it could have been anything.
So to go in I had this tray, onto which I would be dumping out all the medium.
Of course, I needed my trusty pair of tweezers to help me work my way through the medium
for whatever I might find, and I also used a plastic spoon just in case I needed it.
The rounded edge would prove safer working around any living larvae or pupae.
I also had on hand a bag of decaying coconut tree wood and debris that I collected from
my neighbourhood.
This was on stand-by, if ever any of the beetle larvae were still actually alive but had just
run out of food, perhaps, something I figured was a big possibility seeing as they've not
come yet.
I also had a bag of soil on stand-by, containing some freshly decaying wood chips and mulch,
to add to their growing medium in case they needed more.
Alright AC Family, and now for the moment of truth.
It was time for us to go in and get to the bottom of our rhino beetle no-show.
I put on my gloves.
Are you guys ready?
Let's do this.
The first chamber I wanted to grab was this one.
Have a look at it, guys.
To my horror, this growing chamber was full of fungus.
See all those white hair-like fibres?
Every single wall of this chamber showed this fungus growing profusely throughout the medium,
which is definitely alarming and not a good sign, because in my mind, this was evidence
that the larva inside had perhaps died, which lead to this mass fungus outbreak.
Now before I go in, many of you asked in previous videos how the beetle larvae were breathing.
Well, each of these chambers contain four breathing holes, as well as one of these rotating
doors which pop off.
Opening the chamber, the sight of the fungus frosting the surface of the medium like deadly
snow, made my stomach turn.
I didn't want to jump to conclusions but in my mind, this beetle larva was surely dead.
AC Family, what do you think?
Let's see if we're right.
With my tools on hand, I carefully tipped the chamber to lay it on its side and started
to carefully excavate.
I made sure to inspect every clump in the medium.
Soon, I ran into a layer of decaying coconut tree wood, placed inside back when this chamber
was first made.
It was hard to tell if it had been eaten or not.
(Sigh) Let's keep moving.
I continued to dig deeper, surprised that I hadn't seen any signs yet of the larva dead
or alive... wait...
I stopped dead in my tracks.
What was this?
AC Family, a movement...
I couldn't believe my eyes.
The world all around me stood still as I watched this miracle of a juggernaut moving its legs,
trying its best to right itself.
Guys, have a look!
It looks like we had a living and healthy adult rhino beetle!
I went in to fetch it and bring it into the light so I could have a better look at it,
and the whole time it stridulated at me with some buggy hissing noises.
The stridulation in these beetles is caused by the rubbing of body parts together, and
its purpose is to scare away predators.
I never got used to the sound, and it semi-worked at keeping me on guard.
But OMG, AC Family, can you believe this thing?!
It was absolutely massive and heavy!
I was so blown away by how solidly this rhino beetle was built.
Check out those crazy horns!
The presence of the horns meant this was a male.
Males use their horns to wrestle each other for territory and the right to breed with
females.
And check out his incredible face.
He sports two short, club-like antennae, and warns any predators that they risk a painful
pinch between two, double toothed horns.
I could not believe the anatomy of this majestic creature.
If this thing were the size of a human it would totally be an unstoppable tank, and
dangerous!
It insisted on walking and as it did, I had to remind myself that this thing was a living
insect, as it more resembled a windup toy of some sort.
Haha!
I placed our bull back inside his container, inserted some wood to give him some extra
shelter, cleaned his enclosure up a bit, and everything was A ok!
Such amazing news that he was actually alive in there!
Next!
I grabbed another chamber and began to dig, much more hopeful this time.
Suddenly, more beetle sounds from within the dirt, and a glimmer of shine from within a
chamber.
AC Family, we've reached another beetle!
I went in carefully to move surrounding medium so I could fetch this beetle from its soil
cell.
I immediately noticed that this one was living with a few mites, which apparently is a common
thing in scarab beetle keeping.
This male had smaller horns than our last male, but was still quite impressive!
I placed the fella back into his enclosure along with a piece of wood for shelter and
what I caught the male doing next truly surprised me.
AC Family, watch this!
The beetle was a digging machine!
Using his head gear and spiny legs, in a few short moments this beetle was completely below
the soil.
It seems warfare isn't the only purpose of having those crazy horns.
They're also double functioning as digging apparatus.
Over the next hour and a half I took the time to go through every single chamber, and in
the end, this was the outcome of our grand excavation and inspection.
AC Family, here you will see five piles.
Each pile contains the various things I found while searching through each chamber.
Let's start with this first pile on the right.
Well, not a pile, but a single chamber.
This chamber was both good and bad news.
As I dug through it, all I could find was some larvae skin, but no beetle, so the conclusion:
the beetle larva, somewhere along the line, had died.
Not sure why.
But the good news is, it was the only chamber in which I found any dead.
Moving on to the next pile, in these two chambers, I was surprised to find beetle larvae still
growing.
Some of the larvae I put into these chambers back in October were smaller than the rest,
so perhaps these were the youngest of the batch.
So, I emptied out some of the digging medium, woah check out all that beetle larvae frass!
I'm gunna use some of that in a future terrarium!
I then placed the beetle larvae back in, added more decaying coconut wood, poured in some
fresh mulch, and topped off the container with more medium.
I was happy to know these larvae were still at least alive.
Moving on to this middle pile, the findings get more and more exciting from here on in.
Can you guess what these chambers contain?
Well, for these two chambers I didn't even need to dig because luckily, I could see what
they contained through the wall.
Pupae!
The teenage transition stage of all insects undergoing complete metamorphosis.
See that horn?
From the looks of things it seems we have two males on the way.
So exciting, right guys?
I expect these beetles to arrive very soon!
And now we move on to our next pile.
Can you guess what I found in these two chambers?
AC Family, I am thrilled to show you.
In two of the chambers, I dug and I dug, to reveal such precious finds.
Have a look!
Beetles with no horns.
AC Family, these are female rhino beetles.
Perfectly rounded heads, also with club-like antennae and spiny legs, these female rhino
beetles were equally as impressive.
To me these female rhino beetles possess that iconic scarab beetle look.
Just gorgeous to look at, and also solidly built.
One interesting thing to note, was that in every chamber containing a fully formed adult
beetle, I found two skins.
Look at this, AC Family.
The first one was the shed skin of the larvae when they became pupae, complete with the
larval head case and legs.
The second one was the outer shell of the pupae which they discarded, when they emerged
as adult beetles.
Pretty cool to see the historic evidence of their journey from young to old.
Alright, guys, so these two chambers contain the females.
Let's place some pink post-it notes to mark them as such.
You'll see what this is for in a little bit.
But now that we've done that, are you ready to be blown away by our next and final pile?
Will you believe that this tower of not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but
six chambers all contained adult male rhino beetles?
The various males' horns varied in size, from small horn structures, to medium-sized horns,
to large horns!
I'm not sure why all males weren't created equally, but it was interesting to find proportionally
a great ratio of males in the batch.
But this male rhino beetle disproportion was perfect, because as mentioned at the start
of this video, I'm about to show you what epic plan I have ahead for these beetles and
for us, the AC Family, in just a little bit.
I placed blue sticky post-it notes on both pupae chambers, and all the male chambers.
So what are all these post-it notes for, you ask?
Well, first I was going to use them to designate names to each of the beetles.
I named them all after Greek deities.
Zeus, King of the gods, Poseidon, Lord of the Sea, Ares, God of War, Apollo, God of
Healing, Light, Truth, and Medicine, Dionysus, God of Harvest, and Hephaestus, God of Fire.
As for the pupae, Hades, god of the underworld, and Hypnos, god of sleep.
The females are Hera, queen of the gods, and Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty.
And now, are you ready to hear my ultimate plan, guys?!
So exciting!
Ok, so now that we have all our rhino beetles named and separated, my plan for these beetles,
is to sort of replicate the naturally occurring events of nature, in a systematic manner that
is both controlled and well, fun for us.
AC Family, I would like for us to play a little game of sorts.
A tournament, a rhinoceros beetle tournament.
So as I mentioned previously, in the wild, male rhinoceros beetles use their great horns
to fight, not kill each other, but simply wrestle and subdue each other for the right
to territory, feeding grounds, and breeding with females.
The beetles after emerging from their pupae underground await for heavy rains to signal
when they should emerge in the night to start feeding, claiming territory, and breeding,
which is why they weren't around all this time.
They were waiting for it to rain.
And now that we have our rhino beetles separated and waiting for their next step in their lives,
I began to prepare my epic plans.
But before I get into that, I have to quickly make a correction, guys.
I double checked the pupae the other day, and I am glad I did because one of the pupae
turned out to be a female and not a male as I had thought.
So we actually had not eight males and two females, but seven males and three females.
I renamed Hypnos to Athena, goddess of war.
Now, here's where it gets fun!
What you guys are to do is to select your chosen rhino beetle gladiator, among the seven
males.
Now just to be fair, I won't show you each male per name, because then you guys would
all just choose the male with the largest horns, and purposely not select those with
small horns.
There are indeed a couple males of the group with much larger horns from the rest of the
bunch, and I'm not too sure if size matters in the beetle world, but let's just assume
that it does.
Also, some of the males have an alarming case of mites.
Not too sure if that is a deterrence or not, either, but either way, it's an even playing
field for all of us selecting our male rhino of choice, so in the comments section let
us know who your pick is by name, choose only one and stick with your gladiator,
because in next week's video, provided that our last male Hades arrives in timely fashion,
we shall begin the very first AC Rhino Beetle Games, cheering on our favourite male rhino
beetle, as they fight for the throne to claim dominion, over a beetle paradise, and a predator-free
and perfect existence, of endless food, and females, for the remaining final few months
of their lives under our loving care in the Antiverse.
All losing beetles shall be thrown out to fend for themselves back in the wild.
AC Family, choose your gladiator, as we step in to the Ringo Stadium, battlegrounds of
the 2019 Rhino Beetle Games.
Alright, AC Family, first off Happy New Year!
Hope you're ready for more fun and discovery of nature and the world of insects for 2019,
and of course more ants!
Be sure to choose which of the male beetles you're rooting for and let's have fun with
this up coming rhino beetle tournament.
So guys, be sure to smash that subscribe button and bell icon now, so you get notified at
every single upload and follow this continuing story, and hit the like button every single
time, including now.
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 would just like to watch
extended play footage of the rhino beetles.
Check them out.
You might just find something interesting, or even a clue as to who might be a good bet
to root for.
And now it's time for the AC Question of the Week!
Last week we asked:
What does polymorphic mean?
Congratulations to G Cs who correctly answered:
Polymorphic means that within a species, such as ants and honeybees,
there are differences, such as size and other design features.
Congratulations, G Cs, you just won a free e-book handbook from our shop!
In this week's AC Question of the Week, we ask:
How can you tell male rhino beetles from females?
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.
Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed this video to help
us keep making more.
It's ant love forever!