Welcome to Part 10 of our Ecosystem Vivarium Series, where we explore the invasive black crazy ants’ takeover of Pandora using an endoscopic probe camera!
I created my dream rainforest vivarium, named Pantdora, but it has completely been taken over by invasive black crazy ants, who occupy one of the most coveted spots in the terrarium: the Hallelujah Tree Stump, a giant piece of driftwood hallowed out by termites that many of the inhabitants of the rainforest call home. In this episode, we use an endoscopic probe camera to look into the stump and learn about the nesting behaviours of the invasive ants in hopes to stop them from dominating the ecosystem. Hope you enjoy this week’s episode, Part 10 of my Ecosystem Vivarium Series.
I Used an Endoscopic Camera to Peek Into an Ant Nest in My Giant Ecosystem Vivarium
Welcome to Pandora, my 1000-gallon cloud rainforest ecosystem vivarium—a tropical world full of interdependent species of plants and animals. Its purpose is to study the workings of a wild ecosystem, and so far, watching this rainforest evolve over the past six weeks has been nothing short of a crazy ride.
Within this majestic paradise of moss-carpeted soils, a drama of epic proportions has been unfolding. A great Pandoran-wide War of the Ants has been taking place, a struggle for power and dominion over all of Pandora’s rich resources for food and space.
One such resource has been what we call the “Hallelujah Tree Stump,” a colossal mountain of driftwood containing a network of holes and tunnels crafted by termites, which we were pleasantly surprised to discover was occupied by both a colony of termites as well as a colony of native Marauder Ants. But recently, an intruding supercolony of black crazy ants invaded the peace and moved into the stump, breaking into the termite network of tunnels and murdering them, as well as forcing the marauder ants to move out and into the soils.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched these invasive black crazy ants, who snuck into this tank by way of the plants, grow from a small colony with a hundred workers into an enormous horde with thousands of workers and hundreds of queens.
Here they are migrating with all their brood and multiple queens to a new spot they’ve found near the rock embankment by the pond. As an invasive army, their mission was simple: invade and conquer the entire ecosystem by eating everything, growing the colony as big as possible, and killing anyone who stands in the way.
And this week, for the first time ever, I witnessed firsthand the devastating impact these black crazy ants can have on an ecosystem, and by using some highly specialized equipment, I was able to get a firsthand peek into the secret lair of the black crazy ants by sticking an endoscopic probe camera into the Hallelujah Tree Stump, and when I did, the things I saw within their darkened netherworldly chambers left my jaw on the floor!
This is the crazy story of what I saw when I used an endoscopic probe camera to spy on a colony of enemy ants in their nest, Part 10 of my ecosystem vivarium series, where ants truly mean war, here on the AntsCanada Ant Channel.
The nightly mists filled the rainforest with humidity and a refreshing blanket of clouds. “Well, this is nice!” said Charlie, as he stared into the vast expanse into which he was just added. Charlie was the newest tree frog to be added into Pandora. The vast rainforest was still and peaceful all around. He was content to call it home now.
He would soon be meeting his other tree frog colony-mates like Kermit, who stared at the strange tree frog newcomer from a nearby vine, as an acrobat ant threatened to spray him with formic acid if he didn’t leave immediately. “This kid has no idea what he’s up against.” Kermit thought. “He’s better off staying up high in the canopy.” Miss Piggy was also watching the rather inexperienced newcomer, perched on his driftwood right in the open. Charlie spotted a rhino beetle climbing the moss, and a trail of marauder ants moving beneath the driftwood. Though, there wasn’t anything in the rainforest that could eat tree frogs like him (yet), there was a chance he could run into a rather unpleasant encounter if he wasn’t careful about whose way he was getting in.
The black crazy ants, whom I’ve finally named the Dark Hoard, were on the move again. This was the Dark Hoard’s second mass colony emigration within the past 12 hrs. These ants are nomadic and don’t stay in the same place for very long, and here they were moving in silence, to another location in the Pandora rainforest, under the cloak of night, because this trailing event would be exposing some of their VIPs, or VIAs rather.
Have a look! They moved swiftly over the rainforest’s mossy surface. The ants carried their white babies from the glass, through this plant, and up an arm of the Hallelujah Tree Stump, to this hole. The efficacy of the Dark Hoard during a colony move was incredible, and they needed to be focused because look. The workers collectively carried one of their VIAs across the glass. This massive larva is a future queen. From it, will hatch a winged virgin queen, as you can see there, and due to a complex genetic hack scientists recently discovered, the new queen hatching from this larva will be able to breed with her biological brother within the nest, while the rules of inbreeding will be completely negated.
You see, this species of ant doesn’t need to mate with unrelated male ants from another colony, like other ants do. They don’t even need a nuptial flight either. They just mate with their biological brothers at home, and all offspring resulting from this pairing come out healthy, due to this strange genetic hack, thereby allowing these black crazy to self-propagate forever, as long as they keep producing queens and males, which they’ve been doing here in Pandora. Black crazy ants are crazy, right?
Well, it gets even crazier, for nothing could have prepared me for the true craziness I was about to witness with the Dark Hoard, the next day.
Ughhh! What is that?! Brace yourselves, guys.
I woke up to the most disgusting sight ever. It slithered its way down the driftwood surface and towards the moss. Ughhh what is it? It could be a baby earthworm but it didn’t seem to move like an earthworm. A springtail also came by to check out its royal grossness. “Sup bruh!” it greeted, as the worm made its way towards the moss. Its head was so pointy, and again its movement didn’t quite match the slinky-type movements of an earthworm. Anyone care to identify this worm? And omg are those a pair of eyes I see? What a weird creature. Anyway, I was sure it served its beneficial function in the rainforest, and I would be witnessing its ecological purpose soon, but suddenly a swaying movement caught my eye off to the side. It was our resident mantis, whom I’ve named the Green Reaper, thanks to one of you who recommended the name. I watched as the Green Reaper swayed back and forth mimicking a leaf blowing in the wind to disguise herself from predators. Some say this swaying is for visual depth perception, too.
Whatever it was, seeing her always brought a smile to my face. She was so fat now, having eaten a lot of prey in the rainforest. Now I say “she” because thanks to you mantis experts watching her in the last episode, you identified her as a female, which is great! She was such a stunning creature!
Now the next question I had was what her exact species is. Some said Giant Asian Mantis, others said the green morph of a Marbled Mantis. I wonder, is she full grown now or will she have a final version with wings?
The reason I ask is because look: I found another mantis, not sure if it was a male, but it was smaller. Any mantis experts out there care to determine if this is a male or not?
I would like to pair the two mantises if they are a match and once they are mature enough to mate, so our Green Reaper here could lay an ootheca, an egg case to give birth to more mantises within Pandora. Wouldn’t that be awesome? By the way, I so love and appreciate how I can reliably crowdsource information like this with you guys, so we could in the end all learn together. Thank you for that, AC Family.
Anyway, I watched as our Green Reaper made her way up the moss wall, but little did I know, this would be the very last time I would see our Green Reaper, before her mysterious and sudden disappearance from the rainforest.
Up on the moss wall, Charlie was watching a frightful scene below, along with a cricket who also positioned itself far away from the action happening in the lowlands.
They were safer up here, as they watched. The Dark Horde was now on the move again, out of the hole they had moved into the night before, and across the stump, down to an area at the foot of the stump.
Another conjoining trail of black crazy ants were also coming in from another area of the stump. It was crazy to me that the black crazy ants, no matter how many times a day they moved, always ended up coming back to the Hallelujah Tree Stump, and I was determined to find out what was so special about this Tree Stump.
Online, I managed to find this.
It’s an endoscopic probe camera, which essentially is a tiny camera with a little light with three intensity settings so we can really catch the action in the darkest of places, and a long flexible neck. It can take both video and photos, and stores everything into this handheld device here with a screen for viewing. It can’t clearly capture things directly up against the lens of the camera, but you can definitely see things quite close to it and beyond, and I was excited to finally have a peek into the Hallelujah Tree Stump, to spy on the black crazy ants within, once and for all.
It might give us insight into the design of the interior of the stump, how the black crazy ants nest, and how we might be able to stop them from taking over Pandora.
This would be the first time I would ever peek into an ant nest in this way. We would be like a robot ant, being sent into the pits of black crazy ant hell.
But as I was about to embark on the most interesting learning experience of my life, some other very unfortunate lifeforms were entering their most horrifying learning experience of their lives. A tiny baby pushed itself up having just emerged from its egg.
It had taken several minutes to finally reach the surface to emerge into the beautiful forest, but suddenly, it was grasped by some mandibles. Plucked from the Earth before it could ever spread its legs to set foot on the soils.
Another baby, Jiminy, wriggled its way out from the soils, still unable to spread its legs.
The baby crickets were now beginning to emerge all around Pandora, the next generation of crickets. When Jiminy finally was able to spread his legs from his egg casing, he stood still and took in the incredible world all around him.
Another cricket came rushing by, “Run!” “What?!” “Run, run, run!” she exclaimed. “Why on Earth do we have to run?!” Jiminy thought.
There were four particular holes in the Hallelujah Tree Stump that I wanted to really check out.
The first hole was this, where the Marauders used to be seen trailing from, another hole just above it, a hole at the top of the tree stump where the termites were first spotted before the Dark Horde broke into their tunnel, and a hole at the back from which I had seen the Dark Horde emerging once.
I went in to check out the first hole.
At first, all I could see was blurriness due to the camera being up against a wooden wall, but then I could see black moving shapes, black crazy ants rushing by the lens, until… Aha! Woah! We hit the first chamber of the Dark Horde. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
So many ants!
I decided to push the camera further inside. It was a challenge seeing as there were some problematic twists and turns in the tunneling that made moving the probe deeper tough, but eventually, I managed to snake the camera further in and we proceeded deeper into the Dark Horde’s first chamber, which caused the ants to go crazy! So far, I couldn’t see any brood nor queens really, just workers, and a roach leg there.
Let’s move in deeper.
Woah! This was insane! I couldn’t believe we now had visual access into the nest. Ants began attacking the camera lens, spraying it with formic acid, which of course didn’t do anything to the equipment, and then bam. A second deeper chamber and the Dark Horde did everything in their power to keep us from going in deeper. What could they be hiding in there? I pushed even deeper to enter their next chamber.
Ugh! There was a piece of wood blocking our access. Do we go down, or around it from the left or the right?
And then after a couple of minutes trying to make my way around the blockade, I finally reached the innermost part of the tunnel.
Aha! Queen larvae, eggs, and pupae!
Suddenly a mad rush of ants came attacking the lens, as the Dark Horde picked up their brood to scramble it away. I spotted blurry images of queens rushing by, and the colony was now in full-out retreat mode.
Jiminy made his way carefully through the moss, everything seemed pretty peaceful until he caught sight of something truly concerning.
A black crazy ant approached from behind, and Jiminy hopped. He began to run. Now he definitely knew he was in danger. Jiminy stopped to survey the scene around him.
Ants were everywhere, and soon he realized he was in the middle of one big massacre, as he watched the black crazy ant swarms come pouring in to abduct newborn baby crickets like him, and carry them back to the Dark Horde’s nests.
The odds were against the newborns because they were still white and soft, having just emerged from their eggs. It hurt them to move around too much while they were still hardening. They needed to rest until they fully hardened and became dark in color.
But waiting too long could be fatal! Jiminy decided to move, as it ran through the slaughterfield past the black crazy ants.
More and more black crazy ants, who were learning about the new easy prey popping up from the soils came to join the hunt.
Marauder ants had also learned of the new prey and they also appeared on the scene. Babies instinctively headed to higher moss, while others weren’t so lucky to be able to, and were seized by the black crazy ants.
Jiminy managed to evade the black crazy ants all around and stopped to take a breather. Running around like this really hurt.
But suddenly a black crazy ant came creeping by and a voice from beyond called out “Watch out! Incoming ant!” which saved Jiminy’s life as he jumped away. “Thanks!”
Jiminy continued forth, making his way back to the open dirt which he didn’t know was the wrong move.
He managed to dodge a group of marauders quite easily. They were rather slow. Jiminy weaved his way through the droves of ants that were hunting all around him, as he took another moment to rest his achy exoskeleton. He couldn’t move now as the ants came dangerously close.
He was on the verge of just submitting to his fate, and resolved to enjoy his final moments of life.
A baby springtail came along to inspect the baby cricket. “What’s up, bruh?”
“Not much!” The sounds of crying babies as they were whisked away by the black crazy ants filled the air.
This was not only the first day of Jiminy’s life, but it was also the worst.
I had seen what I needed to from this first hole. I proceeded to remove the probe.
It was now time to inspect the second hole before the entire colony was alarmed.
This time the moment I stuck the camera in, I saw a ton of ants. Brood and winged queens were everywhere. I could also see non-winged queens, which means they were mated and active egg-layers also in this chamber.
It was insane. The queens began to move away from the bright lights of the camera, as the ants scrambled about in a panic. I pushed in deeper which caused the ants to go into a crazier panic.
This tunnel was more challenging to penetrate, as I did my best to wind through the obstacles, as black crazy ants went rushing about carrying away their brood and guiding their queens away to safety.
I finally went deeper and could look around. This was a dead end, and there wasn’t a lot to see here now, so I backed out.
As I did, ants were scrambling everywhere from the hole. And now it was time to check the top of the stump, where the termites were last seen.
I immediately saw some broken termite tunnels. Other termite tunnels were kind of in the way as I tried to search for a larger opening I could enter through. I found one and I also spotted black crazy ants running around in the darkness beyond.
I wondered if this top hole was connected in any way to any of the previous holes I explored. I then spotted a lone black crazy ant inspecting the lens curiously, and then panicked.
Another black crazy ant came rushing in telling it to run! The great glowing snake was out to eat them!
The worker ran as others came to attack what they thought was a serpent infiltrating their nest.
Alright, I had seen enough. Just a lot of termite tunnels here. And now it was time to check the fourth hole.
I looked inside and though the camera was too large to fit in, I could still see this. Black crazy ants rushing towards the camera attempting to attack it.
And that was it.
It was so interesting to use this camera. But as crazy as all of this was, this wasn’t the last I would be using this endoscopic camera. I would be needing this device again for something very important.
Ugh! Disgusting! I spotted this gross sight! This was my worst nightmare come true!
One of those baby worms was seen wrapping around a newborn cricket and it looked as though it was either eating it or laying eggs into it? I didn’t know, but ugh the sight made me shiver!
So were those baby worms carnivorous, and how did it have the faculty to capture a baby cricket! What were these hellish worms? “Run to the moss!” the springtail whispered. “Now!”
Jiminy had found the strength to continue running, and he was almost caught by a black crazy ant.
By some miracle, Jiminy had made his way to the back mosses where there were a lot less black crazy ants.
Other babies were not so lucky. The crickets who did manage to harden and darken their exoskeletons were a bit harder for the black crazy ants to catch, but even still, color was no guarantee for survival as some of the darker crickets were also seized by the black crazy ants.
This was indeed the worst massacre I had ever witnessed in Pandora.
The marauders were largely empty handed, having only captured one or two baby crickets during the course of this grim scene.
In fact, I watched a marauder just staring at a newborn cricket being born not knowing what to do and eventually moving on. They just weren’t the same hunting machines like the Dark Horde was.
For the rest of the evening, these newborn crickets would be hunted and dragged back to the Dark Horde’s nest.
Only the luckiest and quickest crickets would survive. As for Jiminy, he was one of the select few who made it out alive during the first hour of life.
Speaking of being alive, it struck me as peculiar that over the next few days, I hadn’t seen our Green Reaper anywhere.
She was literally nowhere to be found. I usually spot her hanging out in the canopy, either on the glass or hanging out by the heat lamp. It concerned me because after watching the cricket massacre, the idea that she may have been killed and eaten haunted me.
My first suspect though, was not the ants. It was this one, basking on the mossy hill.
I wondered if perhaps our sun skink killed her. He’s been known to tear earthworms in half and leave them half eaten on the floor, as well as taking on prey larger than he could consume.
I inspected his poop which he left all around the rainforest floor.
A ton of soil creatures were already working on it. Tiny beetles, springtails, and mites were having a total buffet on the sun skink feces.
It always amazed me how biodiverse the world of soil creatures was in Pandora.
So, based on appearance, it didn’t seem like there were obvious mantis parts in that poop. My guess was that our sun skink had eaten mostly crickets and other soft-bodied creatures.
So my other suspicion was that the mantis was hiding behind the moss wall?
I had the perfect tool now to actually check for myself.
I stuck the endoscopic camera over the moss wall to peer behind it.
Hmmm… I could see the wiring that made up the frame of the moss wall, and the end of the vines of the canopy, but as I continued to look around I could not spot any green mantis anywhere.
Could she really be dead? I couldn’t spot body parts anywhere. If it was our sun skink, I would probably find a discarded leg or an arm somewhere right?
Unless the ants cleaned up after it? Could the black crazy ants have swarmed her and killed her?
As I watched the black crazy ants continue taking home newborn crickets to their nest in the stump, I struggled with what our next step should be.
First off, I wondered if interfering with the natural order of things would defeat the whole purpose of our project here.
Pandora’s whole purpose was to watch how a wild ecosystem truly develops, and well, this was exactly what was happening. In the wild, invasives like these black crazy ants literally intrude and cause havoc on ecosystems, and that was what we were seeing.
But I wondered if I should somehow intervene and take action to eradicate the black crazy ants, by maybe plugging up the holes of the stump to trap the majority of the Dark Horde inside.
But I knew the stump was full of various tunnels and secret exits so plugging them all up would be a mission and a half, so hard. I didn’t want to have to remove the stump from Pandora, as it was hard enough lugging the entire thing inside with no decor. I could only imagine the nightmarish logistics of removing it with all the decor in.
I could possibly vacuum as much of the colony as possible during one of their regular colony moves.
Despite all these measures, though, I knew it still wouldn’t guarantee complete eradication of the Dark Horde, because they already had secret hideouts and satellite nests all over the place.
Just one queen was all they needed to get back their massive numbers.
The idea of the Dark Horde eventually leading to the ecological collapse and end of Pandora made me deeply sad on all levels of my being.
Pandora was such a promising biological project, but I feared we were dangerously reaching the end of one of the most amazing creations and experiences of my entire life.
The end of Pandora seemed near and if so, it would be the end of an era.
The next day, I spotted something peculiar in some foliage.
What is that? Wow! Looks like some dried skin, and then it occurred to me.
The Green Reaper! She had shed her skin. She was alive! This totally had to be new, as I hadn’t seen it here the day before, so I looked around, and low and behold, I spotted a leaf swaying back and forth.
Upon checking it out, I saw our Green Reaper, drying in her new skin.
There you are, Green Reaper! So you weren’t eaten! What amazing news!
Watching her camouflaged against the leaves, it’s no wonder I must have completely overlooked her when searching the vivarium for her whereabouts these past few days.
She must have chosen this spot as a suitable place to shed, and what a great choice because the better the camouflage match the safer she would be from predators who might want to take advantage of this vulnerable period while she was shedding.
How awesome! I was happy to know she would be ok.
I later caught her up in the Spanish moss, feasting on a cricket.
She must have been starved! I totally should have had more faith in her survival skills in Pandora, because I mean, millions of years of evolution had to have at least equipped her enough to survive much longer in this rainforest.
As for the potentially male mantis I had waiting to be betrothed to her, he also ended up shedding his skin, and I placed him into his own holding terrarium to possibly release into Pandora in the future, should it be a male and ready to breed.
That would be super exciting to watch baby mantises being born in our rainforest.
Speaking of babies, I caught sight of some movement below.
Baby crickets were now exploring Pandora. I could see them everywhere. Although the black crazy ants had picked off many of the newborns, the crickets had laid so many eggs all over the place that there were still a significant amount of baby crickets now frolicking around the lands.
They were eating the plants, especially the moss, and learning about survival and life in the rainforest with every exploratory turn.
I spotted Jiminy running across the moss, now completely hardened and black.
Though he and all his siblings weren’t completely safe yet, they were more likely to survive now that they were hardened and excellent jumpers.
One of the lessons they would need to learn was how not to fall into the pond. I caught Jiminy that night sleeping soundly in a clump of moss, high up on the moss wall.
Good luck, Jiminy! Hope you grow up to be a great singer one day.
As I looked all around Pandora, I spotted new inspiring scenes of hope.
A cricket dropped from his old skin as a new adult male, who would soon go on to sing to females and pass on his genes.
Female crickets were still laying new eggs all around the forest, as new babies scuttled around.
A jumping spider was hopping around exploring the foliage looking for food around the leaves.
In the pond, I spotted our resident damselfly larva still alive and surviving despite the presence of the guppies who would have relished him.
The vines were now sprouting beautifully, as they fed from nitrates and ammonia from the pond.
Cool to know that our vines were now producing leaves which would soon create a nice and thick foliage layer along our canopy, and another thing I noticed about these leaves was that based on its shape, the vines were not banyan tree vines like I initially thought, but instead were a species of true vine, not a tree, which was actually much better because now I didn’t have to worry about an actual giant tree busting out of the vivarium.
Our true vining system was coming along wonderfully.
Within the Hallelujah Tree Stump, I explored other holes, in which I found some interesting things, like this sleeping roach and this sleeping cricket and roach sharing a hole.
What I had ultimately learned was that not all of the main holes were connected. Most were dead ends, which makes sense seeing as the black crazy ants were often seen traveling from one hole to another on the outside of the stump.
But perhaps the most amazing discovery of all was this.
Ready for this, guys? I checked the cave beneath the Hallelujah Tree Stump in attempts to catch a glimpse of our Marauders somewhere, and at first, I spotted Rocksteady, our rhino beetle munching on some rotten fruit, as well as a bunch of black crazy ants, but as I ventured deeper into the cave, I spotted this! See those huge puffs of soil?
Those soil structures looked strangely familiar to me, kinda like termite mounds.
Wait a sec! No way! And as I looked around a bit more and went back to examine some of the video I took exploring that area of the cave, have a look at what I spotted running across the screen. Did you see it?
There! It’s so fast you could miss it if you blinked. Check out this still shot.
See it? That is a termite! Our termite colony was alive!
And if these were indeed termite mounds beneath the Hallelujah Tree Stump, it meant that our termites were not dead, and had moved into the soils just like our marauders!
Hooray! Such amazing news! All of this made me realize one thing: Yes, although our black crazy ants were indeed “invading” Pandora, and were displacing fauna from their homes, the ecosystem was still managing to push back and thrive despite their invasive presence.
In fact, life itself was designed to adapt to adversity like invasives.
The way I saw it, the black crazy ants were like a virus entering the human body, and spreading, and sometimes a virus can claim the life of the infected person, but most other times, the body has its brilliant way of fighting back against such viruses, with a newfound immunity to dealing with such viruses in the future.
Sometimes a virus will simply integrate into a new body and have no effect on the well-being of the whole system once a balance is achieved, and simply stay there
As I watched a Marauder major patrolling the borders of their territory beneath the stump, which some black crazy ants were attempting to infringe upon, I was reminded that our Marauders still had the faculties to stand up against the black crazy ants, as did the termites, as well as many of the crickets, and thank goodness so too did our mantis,
therefore I had every reason to expect that all hope was not lost for Pandora, and that our ecosystem still had a hopeful future.
I realized that an ecosystem actually needed such agents of adversity and challenge of the likes of the Dark Horde, in order for the ecosystem as a whole to be strong.
It reminded me of a quote by a man named Dr. Steve Maraboli who said, “Look around you. Everything changes. Everything on this Earth is in a continuous state of evolving, refining, improving, adapting, enhancing, and changing.” and so I felt invasives, like the Dark Horde, had in fact a hugely important role in Pandora.
Like heavy weights at a gym or viruses to a body, the Dark Hoard was training the components of our rainforest to become stronger and more resilient, and that was a great thing.
And as I spotted Charlie once again perched at his favorite spot on the driftwood one night, I too like him, wasn’t too worried about a thing, and instead chose to feel awe at the world around, with confidence that in the grand scheme of things, all was well and the future was exciting.
But it didn’t mean we couldn’t do anything to help support a better balance within Pandora,
because after all, even natural remedies, when a person’s health is challenged, could help achieve a healthy balance much quicker, and this simile also applied to our ecosystem.
The Dark Horde, though beneficial to our ecosystem in some ways, still needed to be kept in check,
and a lot of you helped me to determine our next course of action.
Oh, carnivorous pitcher plants, welcome to Pandora!
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