Woah, guys!
What you’re about to see today is totally crazy!
Two ant colonies going to war!
Now as an ant keeper, that loves all my pet ant colonies, despite many, many requests
to do so in the comments section, I personally have never and would never deliberately put
two ant colonies together with the intention of them going to war with each other.
I find it cruel, and a waste of all the time, love, and effort it takes to grow the ant
colonies into the magnificent kingdoms they become over time.
However, having said that, ant wars do happen in the wild, all the time, and for years I’ve
tried to keep my eye open so I could finally film one up close with my 4K camera for all
of you war-loving ant lovers who want to see what actually happens when two armies of ants
come together.
And guess what, guys?
I finally spotted one!
This week, I successfully managed to locate and film a gigantic ant war happening right
in my yard, and you won’t believe what two teams of ants were battling it out to the
death!
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So let’s start with how I discovered the ant war!
Welcome, everyone to Antopia, the name we’ve given to the almost 3,000 square meter plot
of tropical landscape that makes up my yard, and the future location of our Ant House,
a home I’m currently building to house all our pet ant colonies and beasts on this channel.
Speaking of which, I’m happy to report that construction is coming along well and on schedule,
and we should be moving in later this year.
But during a visit to Antopia this week, the things I saw truly astounded me!
In case you’re new to the channel, here’s a backgrounder on what we have come to call
the Great Antopian War that is literally happening right in my yard, in Antopia right now.
Antopia happens to be a dynamic world, home to dense and towering vegetation, insects,
amphibians, and of course literal battalions of a multitude of ant colonies, all striving
to come out on top.
These ant colonies are at a constant war with each other, some have formed alliances and
tolerate each other’s presence, and as we’ve seen in previous videos on this channel, through
meticulously following this Great Antopian War, I’ve been able to map out the exact
locations of all the ant colony encampments I could find, and so far, I’ve discovered
there are two main teams of ants: First, we have Team Native Ants, and this is the official
badge we’ve given them to mark their locations in Antopia.
So far, we’ve learned that Team Native ants is composed of the following ant tribes...
Ready for this, guys?
Weaver Ants from the tree tops, Asian Marauder ants with their huge supermajors, Big-headed
Ants from the outer Bamboo Forests, the elusive Odontoponera ants, Twig Ants inhabiting in
stick hallows, Flower Ants living in Acacia bark, and as we discovered in our last Antopian
episode Asian Bullet Ants patrolling the grounds.
All these native ants, have lived in Antopia for millions of years in the land passed down
to them from their ancient ancestors, but today they fight a great war against their
archenemies: Guys, meet Team Invasive Ants.
This is their badge, and marking them on the map of Antopia they are composed of the following
aggressive ant tribes: Black Crazy Ants, Ghost Ants, Pharaoh Ants, and the fearless Fire
Ants.
The ants of Team Invasive Ants, as their name suggests are invasive ant newcomers, and have
only recently been introduced to Antopia.
They’re colonizers, with one sole intention: to claim Antopia and all its resources from
all other ants on the property.
How did Team Invasive ants get here in the first place?
Well, by way of human activities over the last few decades, and since have been mercilessly
outcompeting, displacing, and killing Team Native Ants for the abundance of food, resources,
and space that exists here in Antopia.
Now the winner of this great war is crucial because if Team Invasive Ants wins and successfully
drives out or eliminates Team Native Ants from Antopia, it could mean disaster for Antopia’s
delicate and precious local ecosystem.
All the species of an area depend on each other and are linked via the great food web
which of course, takes millions of years to establish, and all it takes is a few invasive
species to completely change or ruin that ecological balance.
This is why we’ve all been rooting for Team Natives to win the war.
Now we’ve watched Team Invasives already killing native wildlife, as you can see these
fire ants devouring a native frog!
Poor froggie!
As well as Team Natives and Team Invasives competing with each other for the local termite
supply!
This war is definitely heated!
But AC Family, what I saw in Antopia this week, was the ultimate plot twist of the century!
First, check this out.
It was gruesome scene.
A black and yellow mosaic of reptilian scales flung like a crumpled carpet across the earth.
It was the rotting carcass of a dinosauric beast.
Huge flies gathered in a messy business to feed and lay eggs on the exposed flesh.
This was the carcass of a monitor lizard, one of the many native creatures that roam
Antopia.
My guess was it was killed by a hawk or some other larger predator then skinned, with its
remains left to the scavengers of Antopia to finish off.
And it was no surprise that in the tangled mess of lizard skin, I spotted ants.
Ants are important decomposers in all ecosystems of the world, so if an animal had died, surely
ants would be among the first creatures on the scene, but what I was most interested
in was what ants were on the scene to consume the native lizard, and more specifically whether
the ants eating the lizard were Native or Invasive.
Nearby, I spotted the lizard’s skull and stomach, and check out the incredible sight
I saw.
A huge swarm of ants, and to my delight, I was pleased to discover they were the famous
Marauder ants of Team Natives.
Thank goodness!
The Asian marauder ants celebrated festively as they consumed the monitor lizard’s meat.
This huge carcass would surely feed their colony for the next few days, and help them
grow to an even bigger population over the next week.
Finding this carcass and stripping it of its meat could spell the difference between life
or death, especially in light of this Antopian War against the Invasive ants.
The ants were ready to defend this carcass from any thieves be they ants or otherwise.
They weren’t even willing to share it with the flies.
Most of the flies had to settle for now with eating the leftover scraps from the skin.
I even saw some flimsy black crazy ants, of Team Invasives, darting around the outskirts
of the feeding frenzy, trying to get in closer, but I knew they wouldn’t dare be stupid
enough to advance in on an Asian Marauder ant colony as big as this one protecting their
meal.
The black crazy ants, too had to wait for the Asian Marauder ants to finish off and
make due with their scraps if any.
But just when I thought things were looking up for Team Natives, not too far away, I also
spotted this.
Another swarm of ants, but this one was not as promising.
Fire ants, consuming another carcass of I don’t even know what!
It’s hard to tell if this was a bird, a mammal, another reptile or amphibian.
What do you guys think?
The fire ants had already effectively buried the carcass with huge grains of dirt in order
to hide it from birds or other animals that might want to take it.
Through the protective layer of dirt, fire ant workers were busy ripping the meat off
the carcass and taking the pieces back to their nest in chunks or predigested in their
social stomachs.
One thing’s for sure, I wasn’t too happy about finding the fire ants consuming yet
another native Antopian creature.
These Invasives had an appetite for meat, and it hurt me to know they, too, were consuming
available food resources in Antopia, food that should be for the native ants.
The fire ants could also have possibly even killed this native creature which is also
not a good thing.
Now, AC Family, brace yourselves, because what I saw next while trying to locate the
nest of these fire ants, so we could mark them on our Antopian map, was something I
was not at all prepared to see.
Following the trail of ants from the carcass, it led me to a strange commotion happening
nearby.
Here was an opening to the fire ant nest but one thing I noticed was that the ants were
a bit frantic in their movements.
The ants seemed to be in emergency mode, a sight I’m very familiar with.
My own fire ants get like this whenever I stick my hand in their territory.
It’s a bit different from the feeding excitement movements whenever I stick food into my fire
ant terrarium.
Something very serious was happening, and so I continued to look around for what was
causing this certain emergency response.
And that’s when I saw it.
Oh my g!
This was an ant war!
But what shocked me was that this was a war between two fire ant colonies!
I could see batches of ants grappling with each other amidst the swarm of fire ants,
and their motivation?
A piece of chicken bone tossed on the ground from one of the workers working on the Ant
House.
This was an epic war between two different fire ant colonies over a piece of chicken
bone!
Wow!
I watched wide-eyed as the fire ants battled it out, seizing ants from the opposing colony
at key areas of their body so they couldn’t bend to use their deadly stingers against
them.
Check it out!
I couldn’t believe the scenes I was watching up close.
I watched as a huge fire ant supermajor patrolled the trenches of the battlegrounds to make
sure her team was winning.
Now you might be wondering why these fire ants are attacking and killing their own kind.
Well, fire ants by nature are not friends with any other ants, not even their own species.
They’re that ruthless, and not only will they kill, attempt to outcompete, and/or displace
other species of ants, but they’ll even do this with other fire ant colonies.
In the world of fire ants, if they’re not from your colony, you kill them!
I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing here.
Now the next thing you might be wondering is how do these fire ants tell each other
apart, like how can you tell if an ant beside you is from your colony, considering everyone
looks the same.
Well, ants have special chemical markers on their exoskeletons which give off a specific
colony scent.
It’s kind of like an official colony ID badge which tells other ants that you are
from the same colony.
Every colony’s identifying scent is different, and always changing, and so these ants can
quite easily tell which of the ants are family, and which are enemies.
The grounds were already littered with injured ants, dead ants, and ants which were being
held hostage for killing later when they tired out.
While this was happening, more and more droves of ants from each side were rushing to the
scene in order to claim this huge chicken bone piece.
That is how important any source of food is for these fire ants.
They’re willing to sacrifice their lives for the few days of nourishment, as even a
bit of flesh and bone marrow could mean the colony could grow even a bit larger to give
them an upper hand in this Great Antopian War.
Amazingly, only an hour later, the scene had died down.
Both sides had retreated to their respective nests, the chicken bone had been stripped
of all edible bits, and both colonies were nursing their wounded warriors.
Dead ants were scattered across the battlefield and the aftermath of it all was truly shocking.
I couldn’t believe the bloody scene I had just witnessed and caught on camera.
It’s actually the first time I’d ever seen anything like this up close.
How about you guys?
What shocked me about the fire ant war was that fire ants, as members of Team Invasives
were so invasive and built for invading, that they were even willing to invade their own.
Perhaps this could be a good thing to know in our war against Team Invasives, because
we can be sure that fire ants will not band together like Crazy Ants, Ghost Ants, and
Pharaoh Ants do to form supercolonies.
I think if we continue to support the local ant species of Antopia by feeding them near
their nests, creating more habitat for them by planting trees and shrubs at various places
of the yard, and spot cleaning up any carcasses or feeding sites we may see the fire ants
claiming, we might help put the fire ant population of Antopia at a disadvantage.
What else do you guys think we could do to naturally and ethically help out Team Native
ants, and place Team Invasives at a situational disadvantage?
I did also notice that while a pathway for a drainage pipe was being dug out by the workers
in the yard, they had inadvertently upturned several fire ant nests.
This must have been destructive for their colonies and there’s a good chance the one
queen of each of the fire ant colonies within the path of this pipe excavation was fatally
injured, thereby killing these colonies.
I’m still unsure how else we can help support the native ants of the area, so they can have
the upper hand at winning the war against team invasives, but today, I believe we witnessed
that this Antopian war is actually much more complicated than we ever imagined.
I’ll continue to document and uncover all the secrets that Antopia has to reveal over
time, as it seems with every legendary expedition into Antopia, this Antopian War saga gets
more and more mind blowing!
And until we officially move our Antiverse to these new untamed and savage lands, thank
you all for watching, and supporting the ants.
It’s ant love forever.
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.
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In this week’s AC Question of the Week we ask:
What was your favourite part of the Ant War in today’s episode?