Snakes and ants seem like a very unlikely pair when it comes to biological relationships, but you won’t believe what I found inside our ant terrarium! No snakes were harmed during the making of this video, but I don’t know if we could say the same for ants!
Ants vs. Snake
Welcome everyone to the AntsCanada Ant Channel.
On this channel, we’ve seen some pretty incredible stuff occurring in the lives of ants, but what
I was able to shoot for this video was something I’ve never ever seen before.
In case you haven’t been following the saga of the lives within this terrarium, I, along
with a ton of AC Family out there, are convinced.
This terrarium carries a curse.
Every ant colony we have tried to move in here to inhabit this terrarium we so carefully
crafted with selected plants, originating creatures, and soil, has either died before
moving in, was thought to have died inside, or escaped.
In fact, some of you have suggested the ghost of the bearded dragon that died in these lands
is haunting our every attempt to move in our ants.
But AC Family, what we find today inside this terrarium will truly blow your mind.
Keep on watching until the very end.
Today, we discover that these cursed lands harbor a dangerous creature that I had no
idea was living secretly in this terrarium all this time.
A serpent.
Welcome everyone to another episode of the AntsCanada Ant Channel.
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Welcome to the AC Family.
Enjoy.
Never in my life have I ever come across a terrarium that truly acted like it had a
mind of its own, where all the creatures seemed like they were mere parts of a giant creature,
each creature with its own function in the grand superorganism like in this terrarium.
New creatures that I never knew lived here have begun to emerge, seemingly out of nowhere.
Snails, for instance, awake to greet the new day in these rich territories.
I believe the snails may have come in with the ficus’s original soils, and they’re an
interesting addition to this terrarium as they graze on mosses, plant matter, and decaying
material.
But more abundant than these and perhaps the most dominant animal lifeform within this
world are the diminutive critters called Springtails.
Springtails are little creatures that used to be considered insects, but currently are
referred to by scientists as Collembolans.
They are omnivorous but feed primarily on molds and fungi that grow on decaying matter.
They also feed on microbes.
That is how small they are!
To me, they seem like flocks of sheep in the micro world.
Also sharing the habitat with the Springtails are these less social but cute critters: mites.
The mites also feed on decaying matter and fungi and help with the decomposition of material.
It seems the flocks of Springtails want nothing to do with the mites, and vice versa.
And now bursting through the flocks comes a confident ranger.
A Titan.
For those of you who are new to the channel, this is a worker ant of a colony of Asian
Marauder ants named the Titans, that we recently moved into this terrarium, and boy are we
happy to see it now.
We initially thought they had died out sometime during the transition, but since our last
video, we discovered that the colony was actually still alive and inhabiting these lands somewhere.
Seeing the Titans foraging like this was a good sign that the colony was functioning
as normal.
If they were having a rough time moving homes before, it seems now they have gained their
second life.
The Titan travels confidently searching for food that it can bring back to its family
in a hidden burrow somewhere in this terrarium.
I still haven’t been able to locate where the Titans had set up home base, but I suspect
that it is somewhere here, around this driftwood piece.
So, I have begun to place food near there for the workers to feed from, but here’s where
I was reminded that the ants were not the dominant organisms within this terrarium.
For in placing this pre-crushed baby roach onto the ground’s surface, it wasn’t long
before other terrarium inhabitants began to snatch up this opportunity for a meal.
At first, this cockroach attracted Springtails and various other terrestrial creatures.
But then the ground below the cockroach began to move.
A Titan came by but was totally not interested in the cockroach.
Several hours later, I returned to discover the cockroach half within the soil, being
eaten by a creature below ground.
It was being eaten by an earthworm, admittedly one of my worst fears in the entire world.
I didn’t even know earthworms ate meat, but it seems the worms in these lands had a taste
for dying insects, and surprisingly, so did the snails!
Like a slimy scavenger, a snail came to finish off the remains which the earthworm left behind.
Although they may seem repulsive, earthworms who belong to the class Oligochaeta play a
major role in the conversion of large pieces of organic matter into rich humus, thus improving
soil fertility.
Here you can see a piece of leaf that a worm has dragged into its burrow.
This will then decay and improve soil quality.
Earthworm digestion also helps convert vital minerals and nutrients into more absorbable
forms for plants.
Watch as this earthworm excretes waste.
Each of these pieces of earthworm feces is loaded with nutrients for plants.
Earthworm tunnels also enable the processes of soil aeration and drainage.
There’s no doubt these earthworms are biologically important in this terrarium.
But wanna hear something cool, AC Family?
Earthworms do not have eyes but you may be surprised to know that they can see light.
They have specialized photosensitive cells called “light cells of Hess” which help them
tell if it’s sunny or dark.
This is essential because many of their predators are daytime creatures, and sensing quick light
changes from a shadow of a predator can make the difference between life and death.
Watch what happens when I move the light on this earthworm.
It quickly instinctively retreats but doesn’t go far because it can feel that it is still
enclosed in its burrow.
It seems all the creatures in this terrarium have achieved a sort of balance.
They kind of live together and feed together, but I wasn’t prepared in the least to discover
that in these flourishing lands lives a creature, a monster in fact, that I have never ever
seen in my life.
I was awake at 2 AM one night and peeked into the terrarium and discovered a peculiar
creature moving through the moss.
At first, I thought it was a really long and thin millipede.
But as I looked closer, it seemed the creature had no legs.
That was odd.
Perhaps it was a type of worm?
Take a look.
And then, that’s when I saw it.
The creature had a little tiny tongue flickering out of its front end as it moved about.
Oh my G!
This creature was a snake!
I had no idea snakes this small even existed.
It was only about 2 inches long!
I couldn’t see a pronounced head nor eyes, but I could see that flickering tongue smelling
the world as it navigated around.
Can you believe it, guys?
An actual snake was living in this terrarium.
I found it really cool and assumed it was feeding off the small terrestrial insects
in the terrarium, perhaps feeding on the ever-abundant Springtails and mites.
I watched it for a good 30 minutes before it finally disappeared into the shadows.
In the morning, I decided to look it up online.
Typing “blind snake” into Google, the very first search result that popped up was the
exact snake I’d seen the night before.
The snake’s name was Indotyphlops braminus, commonly known as a Brahminy Blind Snake,
a tiny nonvenomous snake found mostly in Africa and Asia but has been introduced to other
parts of the world.
I was surprised to learn that they were also commonly called “flowerpot snakes” due to
the fact that they have been introduced to other parts of the world through the plant
trade, living secretly in the soils of flowerpots.
This explains how the snake got into our terrarium in the first place.
It must have come in with the soil when we planted the ficus.
But nothing prepared me for what I was about to read about Brahminy Blind snakes that
suddenly made my heart jump into my throat.
Their diet consisted of larvae, eggs, and pupae of ants and termites!
The snake fed on ant babies!
Oh no!
Though it seemed the snake had no interest in the adults, the fact that the snake ate
the young of ant colonies meant that it would affect future generations from developing,
and in the world of ants, workers only lived for a good month or two before dying, so the
success of the colony and queen depended on the successful emergence of succeeding generations
of ants.
This snake living in our terrarium was a direct threat and predator to our Titans!
This was just insane!
What terrible luck!
And what made things even worse was how these snakes reproduced.
Brahminy blind snakes reproduce through a process called parthenogenesis, which meant
they were able to reproduce on their own without a partner to mate with.
In fact, all specimens of Brahminy blind snakes collected have been known to be female.
Turns out all offspring that hatch from their eggs are 100% clones of their mothers and
therefore are also born female.
This was a nightmare, because it meant that we only needed one of these snakes to start
a population of them living in these lands, a population of snakes that fed on ant babies!
Little did I know, the night before, the curse of this terrarium had reared its ugly blind
head.
Examining the terrarium, I couldn’t find the snake anywhere.
I kept watch night after night after night after night, but saw no signs of the snake.
I assumed the snake was nocturnal because when I had sighted it, it was in the wee hours
of the night.
These snakes apparently live in the nests of termites and ants but also burrow in soil
for most of their lives.
I guessed that it came out that one time to feed.
My experience with snakes is limited to the pet snakes I’ve owned, including this male
Sonoran green tree python here, named Valentino, which I’ve owned for a few years now.
He feeds at night usually once every week or two.
If the Brahminy Snake in our terrarium is like Valentino here, I suppose we can expect
it to emerge again within 1 to 2 weeks.
But I began to question how it was able to survive so long in the terrarium.
I bet when we introduced the Titans, it had a feast on some ant young.
Who knows how much Titan offspring it had already fed on.
Who knows how many Brahminy snakes actually existed in this terrarium by now.
So many questions.
Finally, after more nights of failing to spot the snake, I decided to take matters into
my own hands.
It was time to go into the terrarium and look for the snake myself.
It was Operation SNAKE HUNT!
I carefully took apart the decorations of the terrarium, careful not to disturb the
soil too much in fear of possibly disturbing the nest of our Titans.
I searched and looked carefully for any snake.
Sadly, by the end of the search, I could find nothing.
No snake.
Perhaps it was truly buried deep in the soil somewhere.
I resolved to keep my eye out every night for the snake to emerge once again, capture
it, remove it from the terrarium, and save our Titans from their predator.
Now here’s where I need your help, AC Family.
If I do capture this ant baby-eating snake, should I release it outside, or should I use
it as a natural form of population control, say for the Fire Nation or even the Golden
Empire, whom we tried to biologically control at one point with pitcher plants, which ended
up failing because the plants ended up establishing a pact with the ants.
Or should we release the hungry Brahminy snake into one of the plant pots in which I know
the savage black crazy ants that killed our beloved Jawbreakers a few months back live?
Perhaps this would be the perfect opportunity for vengeance.
Take a moment now to vote here, and let your voice be heard, AC Family.
As for the fate of the Titans, there really was nothing left for me to do but let nature
take its course within the terrarium.
As ant keepers, and ultimately keepers of wildlife, we always strive to recreate nature
in its perfection so we could be witnesses of its beauty.
But I realized, through this entire terrarium curse saga, that perhaps part of nature’s
beauty is in its natural chaos and in its propensity to be uncontrolled, undictated,
and its parameters determined by no other mind besides its own.
It was at that moment that I realized that this curse which tripped up all our plans
was, in fact, nature telling us who was truly in control, and who was just a player in the
grand scheme of things.
After all, thanks to us and our collective decisions, we unknowingly made it possible
for a tiny snake and all its future babies to be fed in a lush environment that was comfortable
and free of its predators.
It seems nature always has the last say.
Alright, AC Family, wasn’t this all just mind-blowingly crazy?
If you enjoyed watching this video and want to help us keep making more, please remember
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AC Inner Colony, I’ve left a hidden cookie for you here if you would just like to watch
extended play footage of the eerie creatures living in this terrarium.
And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week.
Last week we asked:
Name one preparation that needed to be done before
moving the Dark Knights into the terrarium.
Congratulations to Ant Nation who correctly answered:
Putting baby powder on the tube so they
can’t get to the mesh.
Congratulations, Ant Nation! You just won a free ebook handbook from our shop!
And in this week’s AC Question of the Week, we ask:
Name one way in which earthworms help in an
ecosystem.
Leave your answer in the comments section, and you could win a free ant t-shirt from our
shop!
Hope you can subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST.
And guys, we are less than 10K subscribers away from 1 million subs.
This is crazy!
Let me know what you want us to do for our 1 Million Subs video!
It’s ant love forever!