My colonies of Macrotermes gilvus termites have officially reached the thriving stage! Their fungus comb which took months to establish has finally arrived and I loved looking at the termites’ hard work. This termite farm and home pet project started as a fun hobby, which became a home experiment and has now blossomed into a scientific and relevant project. Come explore and discover the secret and intriguing world of these fungus-farming termites, one of the few animals that scientists know of that are active farmers. Hope you enjoy this week’s termite-y and fungus-y episode! Ant love forever!

My Epic Termite Farm – Castles Built by Termites

A careful termite worker peeks its head out cautiously from within the safety of the colony’s burrow.

When it felt the coast was clear, it began to move warily down the path that its fellow colony workers had cut out a few days before.

It was after something truly precious that it could smell just beyond.

After passing some massive towers of decaying wood, it finally arrived at its destination.

It was time for him to get to work and start mining for this cherished material he and his family needed.

At this time, the termite’s fellow siblings emerged from the burrow to join in on the highly vital mining project happening just beyond.

They needed to excavate and bring home this precious material for the building of something truly amazing!

The colony who lived in a test tube were busy with some secret plans to quietly build their army, and this treasured material that all the workers were after would help them do that.

When the first termite was done collecting the precious material, he rushingly made his way back to the burrow with the precious material tucked securely in his jaws.

You see, something truly miraculous was happening in this humble container, which made up the colony’s entire universe.

As the worker entered the test tube to join his colony, they rejoiced at the new material he had brought back home, which would help build their ultimate home project—a colossal and growing castle made of fungus, which they all needed to survive.

The egg pile laid by the queen, whose butt you see up there, has officially exploded, and this industrial and hardworking colony was about to get massive!

I love our termite farm, which has taken many months to grow, and I can’t wait to show you the mind-blowing progress of our termite colony.

Welcome to the AntsCanada Ant Channel, termite edition!

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Welcome to the AC Family! Enjoy!

AC Family, there it is! Our termites’ official thriving fungus comb!

Oops, that worker flipped on its back.

The test tube glass is still a bit slippery, it seems, but it will right itself up soon.

Poor little guy.

Anyway, this test tube will hopefully be their temporary home for now, but more about our plans of moving them out of here later.

But those of us who’ve been following this entire eye-opening and scientifically groundbreaking termite series since last year understand how huge and titanic of a deal this is, because getting to this stage for these Macrotermes gilvus termites is extremely difficult—both in nature and even more so in captivity.

In fact, this fungus-building process of these Macrotermes gilvus termites has never been filmed before in 4K like this.

But after months and months of us offering our termites the care and resources they needed, with the collective help and input from you guys, the AC Family, we’ve finally gotten them to build this crazy castle of fungus!

This has been a total dream!

Now, I’ll show you and talk more about this miraculous castle of fungus, and in this video, I’ll also be asking you a very important question where, as always, I’ll be needing all of your help, so do stay tuned until the end for that.

And oh yeah, did I mention SUBSCRIBE to the channel?

If you haven’t yet, please kindly do that now to join our ever-growing AC Family.

The more the merrier, and the more help I can get the better because what we are doing here is definitely a first and valuable to science—and so many of you guys have helped me get to this point already.

Thank you, AC Family! And now onto the video!

So speaking of your help, before anything else, we have a very important order of business to tend to!

AC Council, it’s time to officially come together and name this awesome termite colony of ours!

In the last video on our beloved termites, I asked you guys to give your name suggestions for our termites, and I have collected all of my favourites, as well as those which you guys bumped up through ‘likes,’ and I have pinned the top name suggestions under the pinned comments of this video.

Now, to cast your vote, simply hit the ‘LIKE’ button on your favourite name suggestion post, and the winning post will be the official name of our termites.

Go now and LIKE the name suggestion of your choice! And PS—you can also like more than one suggestion if you so choose.

Thank you, AC Council, for your input!

And now, to the fungus castle.

If you’re new, as mentioned, it’s been a long road getting to this point.

Last year, we on the channel were right smack in the middle of an annual termite nuptial flight, where reproductive queens and kings fly into the air in massive swarms.

Then the paired kings and queens who get “married” kinda follow each other around looking for a place to start a nest.

I caught several king and queen pairs, placed them into test tubes, where they went on to lay eggs, from which hatched some cute white babies, which grew into adults surviving off the king’s and queen’s liquified body tissues—until the colony was a big enough size to break out of their nest and start foraging for decaying material containing the needed termite fungus spores.

Once that material with the termite fungus spores was collected and digested, the resulting poop would be placed together to form a sort of dark pillar.

And from that dark pillar would sprout the termite fungus, turning it a light beige colour.

In their last video three weeks ago, the fungus poop structure looked like this, with the fungus’ signature white fuzz, called the mycelium, and the white buds known as mycotetes, which the termites eat.

But three weeks later, their fungus structure just astounds me!

Have a look!

Man, these termites have been busy, and I love that they haven’t obstructed the view with soil.

Alright, so here you can see the fungus castle they’ve constructed.

As mentioned, it’s all made of poop.

But as I said before, this poop structure is vital to the colony’s survival.

On this poop castle grows the fungus that the termites eat—specifically the white buds, the mycotetes.

You can see the mycotetes sprouting from the arms of the poop structures.

The fuzz you see, as mentioned, is the mycelium, which are kinda like the fungus’ roots.

This entire fungus castle the termites are tending to is truly healthy!

So the termites actually only eat the mycotetes, and the availability of these mycotetes for food is truly evident.

The colony now has a ton of workers at different stages and a healthy pile of eggs.

The workers from here on in will be nourished by the mycotetes the termites farm, so the workers will start to get bigger and more healthy than the first pioneering generation of workers which lived off the liquified king and queen tissues.

What’s amazing about all this is that these termites are among the very few animals known to man that actually actively farm their food source.

Besides us humans, there’s a species of weevil called Euops chinensis that tends to and farms its symbiotic fungus growing on leaves.

There’s a longfin damselfish that farms its symbiotic species of algae.

Of course, all species of leafcutter ants are also active farmers, collecting leaf pieces which they cut from plants and trees, bringing the pieces back to the nest and chewing them up to create a mulch comb on which their symbiotic fungus food grows.

And finally, these fungus-farming termites of ours, which create poop combs seeded with their symbiotic fungus spores.

The fungus spores actually come from mushrooms which sprout out of the top of the nests of mature colonies of these termites and are carried by winds to cover the detritus over a huge area—detritus which these termites collect, ingest, and undergo a special biological process within their gut via special symbiotic microbes and enzymes which scientists still don’t understand.

Then the resulting poop forms this termite fungus-growing comb.

It’s truly special to be able to see it, as these combs are usually farmed within darkened chambers underground.

The name of the fungus farmed by our termites, by the way, is called Termitomyces, named because this species of fungus only grows in termite nests on the termite combs the termites build.

Now one thing I notice, which is pretty cool, is if you look towards the top you can actually see where the more fresh poop has been laid.

It’s darker in colour, but soon it too will become light as the fungus takes over it.

The mycotetes possess asexual spores which will eventually spread to this fresher poop area and become another fruitful arm with the mycelium and more mycotetes for the termites to eat.

Isn’t that just amazing?

Now, I really noticed this fungus comb exploding in size when I offered them something new.

The termites you saw foraging at the start of the video are bringing back their latest craze!

Here is a new piece of wood.

It’s decaying palm tree wood, and the termites totally love it more than the acacia wood I’ve been offering them.

I think their termite fungus prefers this type of wood much better, and somehow the termites know this, and so they’ve been busy bringing back chunks of this palm wood to the nest for the colony to ingest and poop out to add to their fungus comb.

Even if these palm wood chunks don’t contain the Termitomyces fungus spores, the termites can still use it to grow their fungus now once eaten and pooped out because of the ability for the mycotetes to produce spores for the continuation of the fungus, regardless of what the digested detritus is.

Growing this fungus comb will now be easier from here on in.

As for the king and queen, they look nice and fat again—fatter than when I first caught them—which means they’ve also been filling up on mycotetes.

I just love it, guys!

So for now, this entire setup will work, but not forever.

Eventually, the colony will need to expand, where they will need to create chambers for fungus combs this big, as well as an official royal chamber where they imprison the king and queen—the latter of which will eventually grow their iconic sausage abdomen, producing eggs like crazy.

But in order for all of this to happen, I plan on placing this entire container partly submerged in soil within a larger terrarium designed specifically for them, where the colony will have no choice but to expand their chambers into the available real estate outward from the test tube.

I don’t want to change things up too much just yet because they seem to be doing really well in this setup, but as soon as I see this test tube truly filling up with workers and fungus comb, that’s when I’ll be moving them into a terrarium!

As for the other termite colonies we’ve been following, there isn’t much to report, but Colony C has been doing pretty well.

Their poop structure has expanded now, looking like a cool starting skeleton of a comb.

They also have plenty of eggs and workers.

The poop structure looks like it is starting to brown with tiny mycotetes showing up here and there, but the progress of their poop castle isn’t anywhere near as flourishing as our other colony.

I also have provided them some palm tree wood, which they absolutely love and have even started to build little soil tents around it, which is a great sign.

But at least we have this colony well on its way to glory.

Now, at the start of the video, I mentioned that I’d be needing your help—and it’s this.

What type of terrarium should we move them into?

Of course, the terrarium will need soil, but should it be a diorama-style terrarium where it looks like a huge landscape shrunken down to size, or should it be a more natural-looking terrarium, perhaps designed like a tropical field floor, like the natural habitat in which they reside in my yard?

Let me know in the comments which terrarium design you prefer for our beloved termites, because I’m starting to brainstorm their setup now and would love your input on terrarium design.

And so, AC Family, this is the update on our termites.

All of this is truly such an honour to witness and film because, as mentioned, in nature all of this incredible termite farming we see here happens within the sacred privacy of their nests—unseen by us people—but now we can be among the first in the world to watch the process happen.

For those of you who’ve been following this termite series, you already understand why this is huge because the Termitomyces fungus, once mature—i.e., growing in copious amounts on huge combs tended to by millions of termite workers—eventually sprouts primordia, which are a different type of white bud that become actual mushrooms, which sprout up and out of the termite nests to help the entire termite fungus cycle happen all over again for Macrotermes gilvus termites throughout the region.

Now, these Termitomyces mushrooms are actually a delicacy and very tasty—I can attest to this.

But the problem is, humans can’t grow these termite mushrooms in a lab, nor farm them in the same way that we farm other edible mushrooms.

We need the termites and their special set of gut microbes and enzymes to get these mushrooms to grow!

The termites hold the secret to growing the termite mushrooms!

To this day, if we want to eat these tasty termite mushrooms, people must gather them from the nests of these termites at a special season of the year.

In addition, it is suspected that in order for the fungus combs to sprout the primordia and create mushrooms, there needs to be a lightning storm to happen.

Mushroom gatherers usually wait until after a lightning storm to go hunting for these highly prized termite mushrooms.

Amazing to think that somehow an electrical charge may be involved in the process of the termite fungus life cycle.

Nature is just crazy, right?

There are still a lot of mysteries surrounding the termites and the symbiotic Termitomyces fungus they farm.

But with us now on our way to creating a flourishing Macrotermes gilvus termite colony in captivity, we can now possibly be the first to grow the Termitomyces mushrooms in captivity—making our termite-keeping endeavor valuable to science!

This, to me, is extremely exciting.

And as we together, AC Family, are caring for our termites, giving them all they need to do their thing, we get closer and closer to unravelling all these scientific mysteries surrounding these termites and the fungus they farm!

And so, if you haven’t yet, do SUBSCRIBE to the channel to be part of this incredible journey of discovery with us.

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Thank you so much for the support, guys, and for giving these little creatures—which, like ants, most of the world sees as pests they want to kill—a chance to win over your hearts.

And my hope is that this termite series might inspire others to not use pesticides in their yard so that the important life that lives there—like these amazing termites which live in my yard—can do their thing, thrive, and be fruitful, which in the end also benefits us humans.

I can’t wait for our termite colony to be massive, and for us to one day look into their grand setup and find huge termite mushrooms we can collect and eat with pride!

Until that titanic day comes, thank you all for watching and supporting the ants and termites of our Antiverse.

It’s ant and termite love forever!

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