Greetings Ant Lovers,

Our brand new video delves into the intense world of fire ants and what to expect if you decide to keep fire ants as pets. Beware: they grow fast, are escape artists, eat a lot, and are notoriously aggressive. Watch our new AC video here:

How to Keep Fire Ants As Pets

They’re aggressive, explosive in numbers. They’ve conquered and invaded many areas of the world. And in a large swarm, all people and animals in their path quickly become aware of their presence by way of their powerful stings that burn like fire.

Many of us have had an innate fascination for ants at some point in our lives and perhaps went as far as keeping a pet ant colony in an ant farm. But I can tell you, it takes a little bit of crazy to want to take care of a fire ant colony. Perhaps I and many of you out there have that little bit of crazy, because I’m one of many people who keep fire ant colonies as pets.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to the AntsCanada Ant Channel. This video is about my pet fire ant colony and what it’s like keeping them.

Let me begin first with a warning: These ants are definitely not for the faint at heart, and if you have kids or rowdy pets, I highly recommend not keeping fire ants, as their stings can truly inflict tremendous pain and harm or even death if you’re allergic. They are highly aggressive, especially in large numbers, and hard to contain. I’ll go more into that later in the video, so stay tuned until the end.

I’ve owned and cared for many species of ants in the past, and I still have several other ant colonies in my possession. But I’ve never had an ant colony keep me on my toes like fire ants have. These ants are programmed for three simple things:

1.Grow the colony as big as you can.

2.Overpower and eat as much as you can.

3.Sting to death anything that comes in your way, no matter how large or small.

To understand fire ants a little better, let’s do a little history. Now, the fire ants that most people know belong to the genus Solenopsis, and most of us crazy ant keepers keep one of about four or five different species. The species Solenopsis invicta and Solenopsis geminata actually originated in Central and South America but have managed to reach many parts of the world through human activities, like hitching rides in shipment crates.

These ants are among the most widespread and invasive ants in the U.S. Solenopsis invicta, aka RIFA or red imported fire ants, are a huge problem, and many of you in the U.S. write to me about the abundance of fire ants in your area. The U.S. government is trying to contain the spread of these unwelcome invaders because they out-compete and displace native ants, which is not a good thing for the ecosystem.

Why have these ants become so successful at taking over the world? Well, let’s take a closer look at their lives. These pet ants of mine are Solenopsis geminata, also known as red tropical fire ants. This happens to be my fifth colony of these guys. You see, here in the Philippines, where I’m currently based, it’s common for first-time ant keepers to catch these super abundant fire ant queens, raise them to create colonies, and then, when the colonies reach a massive size, the ant keepers find it harder and harder to contain the ants and/or keep up with the feeding and maintenance that come with them. So, they end up letting them go, or I end up taking them in.

As far as pet ants go, they seem like everything you would want in a pet ant colony. First off, they grow super fast. With most species of ants, for a colony to get this size, it takes at least a good year or two. But believe it or not, this colony is only a few months old and started with just a single pregnant queen. And in a week from now, this fire ant colony will have increased in size by a third.

Part of the reason these guys have been so successful at invading various parts of the world is because they can grow to a massive size in just a short amount of time. And in the ant world, the sooner you can get your colony to a massive size, the greater the chance of survival, because you can gather more food, have more workforce to construct ample housing and take care of the young, protect the colony better, and also out-compete any competitors for resources. In less than a month, I predict I’ll probably need to attach another formicarium to the setup to accommodate the growing colony.

Ants go from egg to worker in just a few short weeks, and the queen is busy her entire life laying eggs throughout the day. Another thing that ant keepers love about these ants is that they’re semi-nomadic, which means they don’t live in one place their entire life. These ants have no qualms whatsoever about picking up the colony and moving to a completely different location if they need to or if they find a better home. This willingness to move can be a great thing for ant keepers. A little light and heat from a lamp is enough to get a colony to move out of whatever container they may be in and into a new space.

Watch this footage of how a colony of a couple of thousand or so fire ants moved into this hybrid nest formicarium:

•Ten minutes later…

•Twenty minutes later…

•Thirty minutes later…

It only took half an hour to transport an entire colony of thousands of workers, a queen, and tons of brood. These guys can adapt and adjust housing very easily and can even form living rafts using just their bodies that float on water if needed, which also explains why they’ve been so successful at invading various parts of the world.

Third, these ants are voracious eaters. They eat anything I give them. On the first day they moved into their new home, they were more than willing to take a superworm. I also feed them feeder cockroaches, which they love. Their success at invading many parts of the world can be attributed to their acceptance of various kinds of food. These ants will even eat grains, cooked meats, table scraps, and love sweet stuff like chocolate and even brown sugar water, as seen here.

Fourth, if you’re like me and you enjoy seeing ant aggression and predation, these ants never disappoint. Just a few nights ago, termite alates were flying all over the Philippines, and somehow they get into houses as they search for lights within homes. So, what I did was I placed the lamp over the ants’ outworld, and as the termite alates flew in, the fire ants were more than willing to take them in for dinner.

Their aggression also gives them the upper hand when competing for territory, defending themselves from predators, and collecting prey food for the colony to eat, again making them very good at invading other countries. Overall, these ants are designed to survive. And all of this sounds cool, right?

Why wouldn’t you want to keep fire ants as pets? Well, these four aforementioned fire ant traits—like fast growth, willingness to re-home, wide acceptance of food, and aggressive behavior—can also be bad traits for ant keepers hoping to keep them.

Let’s look at their fast growth now. Because these ants grow so fast, so too must their maintenance, housing, and food intake increase. These ants depend on me to clean up their garbage site graveyard, as seen here. Look at all those termite wings they discarded from the other night. Ants always establish garbage sites and graveyards, which the elements and other organisms clean up or break down, but in an ant farm, I need to chime in to do the job. Right now, I only need to do it once every couple of weeks, but in several months from now, the duties will need to be done every day.

Their second trait, their willingness to move, can also be a difficult thing to deal with as an ant keeper. You see, these ants are escape artists, and most people keeping fire ants may not have trouble keeping them while the colony is still small but soon realize as the colony grows, they become harder and harder to contain. When these ants are underfed or they need more space, they will constantly be testing the setup for weaknesses until they manage to find their way out—a breach in the security.

They also chew through silicone, grout, and rubber. Now, I’m not too worried about them escaping this setup, though. This Solenopsis hybrid setup is designed to house fire ants, and these ants can’t chew through the materials used in the Solenopsis hybrid nest. This AC Outworld is rounded, so the ants can’t grab onto the corners to climb out. And this Outworld is also designed to keep them in by way of an upside-down band of baby powder along with a well-secured metal mesh lid.

I find new, inexperienced owners of this species who make the mistake of making their own setup soon become accustomed to coming home to a nightmarish room full of escaped ants, all busy moving the colony out into a crack in the wall or down the drain in the bathroom. All it takes is a few hours, and they’re gone, and if the queen moves out, you have a big and serious problem.

Third, the demand for food for a growing colony is great, and the ants will eventually need large amounts of food daily. For a lot of people, this can be a challenging job, especially if you want to provide them with their favorite food—live insects.

Finally, their aggression, which may at first be a source of intrigue and entertainment, just may bite you back in the butt—literally. These ants have stingers and can inject an excruciating dose of an alkaloid venom called Solenopsin, which causes a painful burning sting that later becomes an itchy bump that takes days to go away. When working around these ants, I wear surgical gloves.

Now, what about if you would like to keep fire ants? Well, now you know what to expect. If you think you would be up for the challenge of keeping fire ants, why not give it a try? Otherwise, why not subscribe to this channel so you can simply follow the progress of this colony until it also gets to the point where it becomes too big for me to handle, and I can film how I release my ants back into the wild from whence they came.

Thanks so much for watching this video on the ever-extreme fire ants. What do you think of fire ants? Let us know in the comments section. It’s ant love forever. Bye!

Thanks so much, guys, for watching our new video on fire ants. It means a lot to us. Be sure to subscribe to this channel if you like what you saw. We release a video every first and third Monday of the month. And also, if you’re planning on keeping ants as pets, be sure to watch our AntsCanada tutorial playlist. It’s got lots of great information on ant-keeping basics. And if you like fire ants, don’t forget to check out our Solenopsis geminata playlist.

Finally, if you need ant-keeping products, visit us at AntsCanada.com. We’ve got lots of information there if you want to do some reading on ant-keeping. We also sell ant colonies in key cities, so check our “Queen Ants for Sale” section. And finally, don’t forget to join our ant forum with thousands of members from all over the world who keep ants and who love ants. You can connect with them. Please join us, guys!