Greetings, ant lovers!
Welcome to another episode of the AntsCanada ant channel, a mid-week episode to help you
get through your hectic week!
Today we look at my extremely interesting colony of weaver ants, we call on the channel
the Emerald Empire.
They surprisingly decided to start nest building this week, so I felt it was a perfect opportunity
to create a video on their latest activities!
So, if you're new to my videos, first off welcome to the channel!
Now, the Emerald Empire here is my pet Asian Weaver ant colony, known scientifically as
Oecophylla smaragdina.
They are easily the most unique ants I've ever owned because of their nesting behaviours.
These ants create huge basket leaf nests in trees and shrubs.
Can you imagine ants that don't nest in the ground like most typical ants, but rather
that create nests above you in the tree tops?
What you see here is that awesome process now.
Every now and then as the ant colony expands and grows too large for their current nests,
the colony will decide that it's time to either expand their current leaf nest, or build a
new leaf nest.
The Emerald Empire here had decided it wanted to do both.
Check it out!
This here is their main nest but they've decided to expand with a few leaves pulled in, extending
the nest more rightwards.
That will be some awesome new space for them, I think.
And guys, if you look a bit further down... there!
You'll see where they've decided to nest build their next leaf nest!
Check this out!
Whoa!
Ain't that just awesome, guys?
I just love watching them build during this nest-building process!
Now, check out how awesome and organized the process of nest-building is for these weaver
ants!
Basically, they divide the tasks up.
First, you have workers that act as "brace ants".
Essentially, workers who bite down on one edge of a leaf and cling on with their back
legs to the edge of another leaf, and in unison they pull these leaves together.
These ants have the hardest jobs because imagine for a small ant, how much force and strength
it would take to literally bend leaves many times your size in unnatural positions and
hold them there until the other workers bind them in place.
It's mind-boggling when you think of it.
And while the leaves are braced together, that's when a second team of weaver ants come
in.
The gluers!
Workers use special silk produced from their larvae to glue these leaves together.
This is how weaver ants get their name.
It's kinda like a seamstress going in and weaving a quilt together, with leaves being
the quilt patches.
Once this silk dries, it forms a strong, waterproof wall, strong enough to keep the leaves in
position.
Now all this energy and work doesn't come without a price.
This extra work for the colony requires more food to power their activities, as well as
help the larvae produce the extra needed silk.
So, there are ants in charge of food collection.
Here, some workers have managed to capture a baby roach nymph, which they hunted at ground
level.
The Emerald Empire actually shares their home with a colony of Dubia roaches, and this baby
roach will provide a lot of great protein and nutrients for the colony's larvae to produce
extra silk.
They've actually been preparing a head of time and gathering extra roaches days in advance,
as you've seen in our last episode.
Many ants are also at the sweet food station, gobbling up as much sugar as they can get.
Carbs will help the colony work and give them the energy needed to pull off these huge operations.
The rest of the ants simply stand guard with jaws wide open, to attack any creature or
predator that might find this vulnerable time for the colony to move in and attempt to disrupt
their nest building.
They should be done all the nest building by tomorrow.
Now, aren't these weaver ants some of the coolest ants you ever did see?
I think so.
The fact that the ants nest build in perfect synergy like this just blows my mind, and
that of biologists, too.
We're not sure how the ants decide who does what job in this massive cooperative push,
but we guess it's simply the ants communicating via pheromones what jobs need to be done and
in what amount, and at what times.
It's collective ant intelligence at work, and now you've seen it in action.
If you wanna watch more of the weaver ants building their nests, to the sounds of some
relaxing music, just click here!
It's a hidden video specially made for you, guys who've watched the video this far.
So, thank you, guys for watching!
We'll see you again with another episode this weekend.
It's ant love forever!
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It's ant love forever!