Owning ant colonies is like watching Game of Thrones. As a tribute to the highly anticipated, up coming GOT season, we take a look at the epic and twisting stories of all the ant kingdoms of this channel. The plot twists will shock you! We also launch our ANTSCANADA ANT FLAG CONTEST to celebrate the 2 yr anniversary of the AC Ant Forum. See below for details!
For flag submissions click here.
Mechanics: Design a flag for any of our ant colonies on the channel and post it in the forum at the link above. NOTE: You need to register if you aren’t already a member of the forum in order to post. You may submit flag entries for one, some, or all the colonies on the channel. The ant colonies are 1) The Fire Nation (Fire Ants), 2) The Dark Knights North & South (Black Crazy Ants) 3) The Golden Empire (Yellow Crazy Ants), 4) The Titans (Marauder Ants).
3 finalists will be selected for each colony and the AC Family will be able to vote for their favourite in a future video. The winner of each winning flag will win a FREE Omni Nest Small formicarium from our shop (winner must pay for customs fees if outside USA).
Watch this week’s episode here:
Ant Game of Thrones
Greetings, AC Family!
Game of Thrones fans, anyone?
Well, we have lots of work to do today.
First, our last video hit #4 TRENDING in the USA, which finally lifted the channel to over 900K subscribers.
Congratulations, AC Family!
We are on the road together, marching like ants with a mission towards the big 1M.
Let me know what video you guys would like to see on the day we hit that hallmark number.
Also, this week we celebrate the 2-year anniversary of the AntsCanada Ant Forum at AntsCanada.com, and to celebrate this, we are holding a contest giving away FREE Omni Nest Small formicariums to a handful of lucky winners.
Stay tuned until the end of this video for full contest details.
Now, Game of Thrones fans, to further immortalize the epic ant kingdoms we have grown to love and learn about on this channel, I’ve decided that it was time we gave official flags to each of our colonies.
Today, we will go over the biographies of each of our ant colonies, so if you’re new to this channel, sit back and prepare to discover why our rapidly growing AC Family has come to love these ants.
Let’s immortalize our ant colonies with their very own special flags!
You won’t want to miss a single moment of our ant history, and just a hint, there are some shocking plot twists in this video that will make you go, “What?!”.
Let’s take a nostalgic walk together down memory lane as we embark on a worldwide, crowd-sourced search for official flags to represent our beloved ant kingdoms, on this episode of the AntsCanada Ant Channel.
Please subscribe to my channel and hit the bell icon. Welcome to the AC Family.
Enjoy!
Let’s start with the oldest of our five ant kingdoms.
The Fire Nation—the name our AC Family gave to our famous, aggressive, and lethal colony of red tropical fire ants.
We are proud of this explosive ant colony and always give them ultimate respect.
We watched these ants start in small Hybrid Nests and followed them as their setup grew with the addition of AC Outworlds, eventually becoming a huge network of tubes and units.
We watched these ants completely own a natural disaster, easily overcoming a massive flash flood.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about this massive colony of millions of members is that they all came from just a single queen ant.
One mother birthed this entire colony.
I have not seen this queen since we first acquired the colony, and I don’t expect to see her ever again as they conceal her well.
She is the most important member of this colony because if she dies, there would then be no one to lay eggs, and the population would eventually fizzle out.
This species cannot reinvent nor create a new egg-laying queen to take over.
These fire ants are a stinging species and aggressively sting all prey that end up on their territory.
In one of the most famous, or perhaps infamous, videos on this channel, we watched as the Fire Nation devoured a pregnant cockroach, which ended up ejecting its egg sac, from which baby cockroaches emerged, only to then be devoured by the savage fire ants.
Now, for those of you wanting to take a stab at designing a flag for the Fire Nation, what you must do is visit the link I place in the description box, and it will take you to the forum thread where you can post your flag entry.
I will choose my Top 3 favorites, and you, the AC Family, will be able to VOTE for your favorite in a future video.
Moving on to the Dark Knights, our black crazy ants, also one of our oldest colonies on this channel.
Other than the fact that their population has also exploded since the start, these ants are the complete opposite of the Fire Nation.
The Dark Knights are quick-moving, capable of running circles around the Fire Nation.
We watched as some black crazy ants moved like ninjas through the Fire Nation with incredible ease.
They also are stingless and are non-aggressive.
We watched as they went from just two queens and some workers in a test tube to a huge super colony in a two-story, 40-foot setup, which spanned the two floors of my condo.
What is interesting about the Dark Knights is that they are actually capable of creating multiple egg-laying queens.
As we discovered in a past video, this species is capable of double cloning, making sibling reproductives genetically unrelated, and therefore eliminating the possibility for incest to happen if siblings were to mate, giving these ants the opportunity to produce as many egg-laying queens as possible.
This colony is technically an immortal colony, which can self-perpetuate forever as long as they keep producing queens that mate with their birth brothers within the nest.
I have recently changed up one of their units by placing a large pot with an aloe vera plant in it to better provide the Dark Knights with moisture.
And now, AC Family, are you ready for our first plot twist?
As I was working around the Dark Knights’ setup, I noticed that some workers were pinning down and locking jaws with fellow black crazy ants.
At first, I thought nothing of it—perhaps some wild black crazy ants from my condo fell into their enclosure, and so they were seizing these savage ants.
But later, I realized, “Wait a sec. What if these ants were not savage black crazy ants, but were in fact fellow members of the Dark Knights?”
Oh no! AC Family, could it be that the Dark Knights are turning on their own?
Let’s review how this could be possible.
The current territories of the Dark Knights are comprised of two major nests, home bases located at two separate locations connected by 40 feet of tubing.
Now, the way ant colonies work is each ant colony has its own distinct colony scent, like an ID badge, telling fellow ant colony members that it belongs to the same colony.
Now, it could be possible that over time these two nests began to develop independently to the point that they each started to develop their own distinct colony scents.
This means then, that the Dark Knights may have possibly developed into the Dark Knights of the North and the Dark Knights of the South, and may now be creeping towards a possible civil war of North and South colonies.
Wow!
But then again, it could be possible that these ants that the Dark Knights were seen attacking may be savage, wild ants that fell into their territory.
There was only one way to find out.
I offered the Dark Knights of the South some red-dyed honey so that the Dark Knights would drink it, and its members would all eventually be filled with this red dye.
So if the Dark Knights of the North were indeed warring with their Southern counterparts, I would see the red members going at it with the Dark Knights of the North.
So far, I don’t see any of that happening yet, but I will let you know if I do see any evidence of a Dark Knights Civil War happening.
So, AC Family, if you’re going to design an official flag for the Dark Knights, I suggest you submit both a North and South flag, as we may need to make these two separate kingdoms.
Isn’t that just crazy!
We have a total Game of Thrones storyline happening here!
An epic ant war against their own may be brewing!
So again, if you’re submitting a flag entry for the Dark Knights, just click the link in the description box and post your flag entries.
Moving along now to the Golden Empire, our majestic kingdom of yellow crazy ants, rapidly becoming our most popular ant colony on this channel.
This ant colony has gone through a lot!
They started with two queens and a few workers and were fused with a single queen mature colony, which then went on to suffer a period of colony infection from life-threatening mites, which we tried to cure with exposure to lemons, the movement of the colony into a huge tank, and eventually the further fusion with another five-queen supercolony.
The Golden Empire, which is now mite-free, thriving, and exploding in population as they live in harmony and disharmony with their various tank-mates, has become the central focus of most of our recent ant videos simply due to how epic their story has unfolded.
So, AC Family, please do feel free to submit your flag entries for the Golden Empire in the link in the description box, and we will vote for our favorite in a future video.
Now, moving on to the Jaw-Breakers, our menacing giant colony of trap-jaw ants.
This colony came to us in its infancy with a queen and a few workers and eventually grew into a colony of 30 or so members.
The Jaw-Breakers, to our surprise, were more shy than we thought, and were more careful with their food choices.
They rejected roaches that were too big and, with great care, carried food that passed their levels of standard into their nest for consumption.
We even watched in awe as their one royal queen gave birth to an egg.
The Jaw-Breakers instantly became a channel favorite and even won by a landslide vote a couple of weeks ago to occupy this new terrarium, which is awaiting habitation from one of our ant colonies.
The Jaw-Breakers was a promising colony awaiting to enter its golden years.
“Was” is the important word here, AC Family.
Are you ready for it?
As we know in nature, inevitably where there is birth and life, there is also murder and death, and in some cases, it happens sooner than we expect.
AC Family, I am sad to inform you that I came home one night to a mass of savage black crazy ants completely covering the container in which the Jaw-Breakers lived, despite there being baby powder along the outside!
I tried in a panic to shoo all the wild ants away, but sadly, it was too late.
The savage black crazy ants had eaten and killed our Jaw-Breakers.
They had made away with all the brood, even took away the workers, and there was no trace of the queen anywhere.
I am sorry about this, AC Family.
Our Jaw-Breakers are officially a dead kingdom.
So, we will not be taking entries for this murdered ant colony.
How can we seek vengeance for this massacre?
I know where the wild ant colony lives.
Their nest lies somewhere in a crack in the wall on my balcony.
Quietly in their three-tower lair lives the majestic Titans, our colony of Asian Marauder ants.
They’ve been quiet and strengthening their numbers in their current setup.
This species is super impressive due to their massive supermajors, which act as colony guards.
The polymorphism in this species is incredible.
The tiny minors hitch rides on their massive sisters, which move like tanks, protecting the colony and helping with cutting up food.
Check out the massive queen here.
We are lucky to see her.
Usually, they conceal her well.
She is almost always accompanied by a cohort of supermajors protecting her.
Watching her move into this setup was truly magnificent.
So, AC Family, please do feel free to submit your flag entries in the link in the description, and we will vote based on my top favorite picks in a future video.
And there you have it, AC Family.
A myrmecological Game of Thrones of sorts, this channel will continue to follow these ant kingdoms in the weeks to come.
I invite you to take part and try posting your flag submissions for our ant colonies in our AC Forum on our website, and you could win a free Omni Nest Small from our shop.
You can submit a flag for one, some, or all the colonies.
Good luck, and as always, thank you for watching another episode of the AntsCanada Ant Channel.
Until next week, AC Family, it’s ant love forever!
Alright, AC Family, what an adventure it’s been together, right?
We’ve been through sad moments, scary moments, triumphant, and inspiring moments.
I am honored to have shared the journey with you guys.
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here if you would just like to see some extended play footage of some of our past highlights of each colony.
And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week.
Last week we asked:
“What creature, other than the ants, feeds on the insects that enter my ant room at night?”
Congratulations to MealsOnWheels, who correctly answered:
The house geckoes.
Congratulations, MealsOnWheels! You just won a Free Ant T-Shirt from our shop.
And for this week’s AC Question of the Week, we ask:
What ant colony killed our beloved Jaw-Breakers?
Leave your answer in the comments section, and you could win a free test tube portal from our shop, perfect for housing your starting ant colonies caught during this year’s nuptial flight season before snow comes. Hehe.
Hope you can subscribe to the channel as we release a new ant video every Saturday at 8 AM EST.
Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE to the channel if you enjoyed this video.
It’s ant love forever!