Greetings Ant Lovers,

I’m an alien to my pet golden ant colony. Their current home urgently needed an expansion, so I gave them a new living space. As they moved in, it made me ponder the Fishbowl Hypothesis, as well as my relationship with my ants as their ant keeper, in a very profound way. Hope you enjoy this week’s episode!

My Ants Think I’m an Alien – The ‘Fishbowl Hypothesis’

Something was very suspicious.

This ant stood guard, and so did this ant.

A third guard kept watch as the coordinated inspection was taking place.

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It was now time.

The first ant broke formation and set off to venture inside to check up on the scout whose curiosity was greater than her fear.

“What on earth is this thing?” she asked herself, lightly tapping her antennae to smell the damp cotton wall.

The ants were now completely mystified by the sudden, unidentified lying object that had mysteriously appeared on the roof of their home.

It smelled strange, sterile, and not from this world.

And then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the ULO excreted an alluring bead of liquid.

It instantly pulled an ant in for the taste.

The bead of strange liquid was sweet.

This was indeed something that the rest of the ant colony needed to know about immediately.

The worker ran into the nest.

“Guys, you won’t believe this, but the spaceship excretes honeydew!

If you don’t believe me, here, taste this!”

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Welcome to the AC Family!

Enjoy!

This is my new, young pet colony of golden ants.

They’re composed of many worker ants, five queen ants, and brood.

They’re a neat type of weaver ant, meaning they sling their home with a blanket of webbing produced by their larvae, which is why their test tube home is completely brown and visually semi-accessible.

But it was time they received a new upgrade to their home, and I’m certain you guys will love how they ultimately reacted to it.

I’ll also be asking you guys watching a very important question and will need your help and opinions regarding these ants.

So do keep on watching until the end for all that—coming up.

Now, there has been a concerning update since we last saw this colony two weeks ago when they arrived.

AC Family, have a look.

That right there is a lot of ant garbage.

Over the past two weeks, the ants have been dumping all their waste and feces up against the cotton, which has caused it to foul up a lot and even contaminate their main water source.

You see, some ant species choose to keep their garbage inside their nest and simply bury it or allow mold and creatures to eat it up naturally.

It’s a good tactic for young colonies because keeping your garbage concealed means less chances of a predator or other invading enemy ants from finding your location.

Only problem is, the ants need to be careful living with this garbage pile and must keep a healthy distance away from the garbage area.

More and more, the bigger the pile of trash gets.

There’s also a lot at stake here.

See that pile of eggs?

They lick these clean constantly with their antibiotic saliva so they don’t end up molding.

But I could tell the ants were feeling that pressure to find a better, more cleaner home soon because the colony was already sending out scouts in search of new living quarters.

Which is why I placed in this fresh new AC test tube for them to move into.

But now we are faced with the ever-recurring problem we ant keepers need to figure out: how to get the ants to move.

Sometimes ants will move on their own, and they usually naturally just know when it’s time for the colony to move.

Ants usually won’t just sit in a gross home and kill themselves.

I certainly wasn’t about to shake the entire colony out of their dirty test tube.

Imagine how traumatic that would be if it were you!

So as a rule, ants should move into a new home on their own—and in their own terms.

But AC Family, I did have an idea that might get the ants to at least check out our new test tube setup we had prepared for them.

And turns out, their reaction to this idea of mine was nothing short of awesome.

It was time for a little bribe.

So in the world of ants, bribery happens all the time.

An example of this is the relationship some ants have with plant insects like scale insects.

There’s one right there!

These scale insects will excrete a byproduct known as honeydew, which is super sweet, and ants totally love it.

In exchange, the ants hang around and protect these plant insects and even set up their homes nearby for convenience.

In fact, the ants love honeydew so much, they will even literally pick up these plant insects and carry them to the best plant-sucking sites on the plant so they excrete more honeydew.

This mealybug here—a very popular honeydew source for ants—is living its best life right now.

It’s got personal ant bodyguards and servants to carry it to the best feeding grounds, in exchange for something it totally just craps out anyway.

Efficient bribery at its finest.

So, taking a page from Mother Nature, my idea was to bribe the ants to come check out their new free real estate with a little honeydew mixture of my own:

Brown sugar water, administered with a pipette.

Let’s name this stuff “Moneydew” because golden ants—this oughta get their attention.

Oh golden ants! Come hither and try our sweet Moneydew!

Instantly, as planned, our Moneydew drop drew in an ant.

I was happy they liked it because last week they rejected my sweet jelly cup.

When the ant had its fill of Moneydew, it instantly darted into the nest to tell the others.

Word of the existence of a sweet, unidentified nectar drop outside the nest began to make its rounds throughout the colony, causing curious workers to wander out in pursuit of the claims.

Even one of the queens was tempted to check things out.

But no—too risky.

She would exercise restraint like any royal queen should, for the workers to bring some of the Moneydew stuff to her.

It wouldn’t be long, and it was for the good of the colony.

Another ant had found our Moneydew and drank every last drop of it.

Scrumptious!

I continued to leave more and more drops for the ants, which they absolutely loved—returning to the nest to inform the colony and verify the sweet claims of goodies.

Check out how much they love the stuff, guys!

So, what’s actually happening when they’re feeding from our Moneydew drop is the ants are filling up their social stomachs—sort of like an internal lunchbox—and they return to the colony and regurgitate the stuff up through mouth-to-mouth food transfer called trophallaxis.

And this is how food is distributed among colony members.

You can actually see their gasters extend as they fill up their social stomachs like balloons.

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With social stomachs full of Moneydew, a satisfied group of ants clean themselves in celebration atop the new test tube.

And guys, it looked like our plan was working because an ant had actually decided to carry in a cricket I had fed them earlier today.

They were beginning to see our test tube as a cool place to possibly hang out and even explore further.

I knew it was only a matter of time before one brilliant ant would have the groundbreaking idea that this new test tube would make a suitable new place for the colony to live.

Time to add more Moneydew to speed up this process.

Now AC Family, want to hear something mind-blowing and kind of off-topic but still crazy?

It’s times like these, as I watch the ants feeding from our Moneydew, that I wonder if we humans are like these golden ants of ours in a setup—just tiny creatures without the ability to understand things outside our planetary terrarium.

And more importantly, who’s running things outside our container?

I mean, these ants have no idea they’re in a terrarium.

These drops of Moneydew are just brown sugar water administered via a pipette, and a human is outside filming their reaction with a camera, editing, and uploading a video online for all of you around the world to see—and that you are now all watching them, rooting for them from your place in the world.

Ants just couldn’t possibly understand what’s really outside their world and reality.

All they would get is:

“Hey, we were born and raised in our neat capsule.

We emerged for the first time in this pretty cool world.

We felt hungry, so we looked for food and luckily found some.

And now, this new sweet, crapping, unidentified lying object just appeared on our house and life’s been pretty sweet!”

This is actually known as the Fishbowl Hypothesis.

And I often wonder: if there was some massive extraterrestrial taking care of the universe and just running things…

Could this be what we call God?

You see how ant keeping can get real deep, real fast?

Oh!

It looks like one of the queens couldn’t help it.

She just said, “Screw it. I’m drinking this Moneydew and I don’t care.”

She had her fill, then dove right back into the nest.

You go, rebel queen!

Over time, I began to notice that more and more ants were hanging out in our test tube now, feeding each other through trophallaxis.

I even caught one of the queens emerging, wanting to check out the test tube.

There was already talk and interest in the new space, and after the brief inspection, the queen returned to the colony to report her findings.

The ants were all starting to fill up on our bribe, climbing all over and inside our test tube.

I knew it was now only a matter of time before the ants would have the idea to call this new test tube home—if they hadn’t already.

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Over the next two days, I continued to offer the ants drops of freshly mixed Moneydew, which they appreciated.

They had learned that every now and then, drops of sweet stuff would appear at this place.

And AC Family, check out what it soon looked like inside the new test tube.

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Most of the colony had moved up and into their new, cleaner, more spacious second floor.

It worked!

Don’t they look great in there?

I see a lot of cocoons there, from which workers are going to emerge any day now.

And also, I was pleased to see a nice big batch of eggs the queens have been amassing due to all the crickets and roaches I’ve been feeding them.

Speaking of which—it seems this area is the ants’ formal dining room.

In terms of a nest entrance, they’ve created a cool atrium area with cotton fibers that joins the two test tube openings.

The new nest opening is now here at the top—conveniently close to the Moneydew area.

Now guys, at the start of the video I mentioned that I’d be needing your help and opinions.

Now guys, at the start of the video I mentioned that I’d be needing your help and opinions.

So in our last video, I asked you guys what we should name this golden ant colony of ours.

AC Council, it’s time to vote!

In the pinned comments of this video, I responded with five of my top favorite name suggestions for this colony from you guys—the AC Family.

I had the list approved by your AC Senate, and now all you need to do to vote for your favorite name is to give the post corresponding with your favorite name suggestion a thumbs up.

The name with the most number of likes will be the winner, and we would from then on be able to address this golden ant colony of ours by their new official name—voted by you guys!

So please take the time to look at the pinned comment and cast your vote now.

Thank you, AC Council, for your input.

Watching the ants move into their new home was such an awesome thing to witness, and I felt truly blessed and honored as an ant keeper to be able to have a unique peek like this into the private lives of the ants.

Watch the growth of new generations.

Watch the ants clean and feed each other.

Ants resting and just hanging out contently at home.

And even ants eating as a family—food I’d chosen and given them.

As I took all of this beauty in, it made me hope that if there ever was a great big alien or being out there watching over us in a setup they created—that they, too, look at the big mess that we are and still find us beautiful creatures despite it all…

And will thus continue to care for us and root for our success, with love and admiration, until the day our golden colony comes to an end.

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AC Family, did you enjoy today’s episode?

I have high hopes for our golden ant colony, and soon we’ll be ready to transfer them into a more spacious and lush setup.

You won’t want to miss it!

So smash that SUBSCRIBE button and BELL ICON now and hit “ALL” so you get notified at every upload.

Also, don’t forget to hit the LIKE button every single time—including now.

It would really mean a lot to me, guys.

Thank you!

AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would like to watch extended play footage of our golden ants feeding from our Moneydew offerings.

Go check them out!

And guys, did you know that it’s anting season in the Northern Hemisphere?

And you don’t even need to leave your home to start an ant colony!

You can catch pregnant queen ants from the safety of your own backyard, balcony, or open window starting this month!

Be sure to visit AntsCanada.com for all your ant keeping and collecting gear—shipped to you in a special package from our ant-loving facility in the USA—so you can get the most out of your ant keeping experience.

We ship worldwide and also offer full email support if you need our help!

We also have a helpful forum and ant colony trading marketplace on the site.

Visit AntsCanada.com today.

And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week!

Last week we asked:

Name one difference between ants and termites.

Congratulations to Cam Wilson Spearfishing who answered:

“Termite workers can be either male or female.”

Congratulations, Cam!

You just won a FREE Ultimate Ant Keeping Handbook from our shop!

In this week’s AC Question of the Week we ask:

What substance do plant insects bribe ants with in exchange for protection?

Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a FREE Ultimate Ant Keeping 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!