Greetings AC Family,

This week’s episode is a special one! It’s a celebration of the new ANT-MAN & THE WASP movie, as well as the very first video in 4K UHD resolution! Come see the Ant Room in a totally new light! Enjoy!

The Real Ant-Man and The Wasp (4K Video!)

Oh man! Now, I know this may come as a surprise, but I happen to be a huge fan of the Ant-Man franchise. I know, nobody would’ve guessed. But this week Marvel released its big, highly anticipated movie Ant-Man and the Wasp. Needless to say, I’m excited to watch it! But AC Family, get this! You won’t believe this, but like a miraculous celebratory sign from Mother Nature herself, a few nights ago I spotted this wasp-like insect flying around the lights of the Selva de Fuego, kingdom to my colony of fire ants called the Fire Nation. How peculiar and exciting! But what is this wasp? Where did it come from? Well guys, it will all blow your mind! I can’t wait to show you all the incredible things about this wasp-like insect and the exciting revelations I uncovered this week about one of the ant colonies in this Ant Room. Who’s the real Ant-Man? Well, alright, today I am, and I’m about to show you, for the first time on this channel in full 4K resolution, how ants and wasps converge in the real world. Welcome everyone to the AntsCanada ant channel! Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel, and hit the bell icon. Welcome to the AC Family. Enjoy!

So first thing’s first. What is this wasp-like insect? If you are new to the world of ants, you might say that it’s a type of skinny wasp. It is very wasp-like in appearance, and indeed, there are wasps that do resemble this creature. I managed to catch two of them and place them into a snap cap vial for closer inspection. Have a look at them. One of them seemed to be on its way to dying, and the other just wanted out. AC Family, it may surprise some of you to know that these are not wasps, but are in fact, ants! Yes, male ants to be exact. All male ants of nearly every ant species resemble a wasp in some way or form. It may be surprising to those new to the ant world, especially for those who thought Anthony, Ant-Man’s loyal steed, was male. Despite the name, Anthony is a female queen alate. Anyway, listen to this: the reason why male ants resemble wasps is because wasps and ants actually share a common ancestor in their evolutionary history. At one point in time, ants were solitary wasps, much like the wasps we have today, and somehow down the line of prehistory, evolved to form social colonies, and soon colony members that didn’t have wings, which would later become worker ants. But somehow, as ants began to diversify in species, the male caste in nearly all ant species somehow remained wasp-like. So today, male ants still carry that ancient shape and look of their wasp-like ancestor. In fact, all ants, wasps, and bees are closely related, all belonging to the same order of insects known as Hymenoptera, characterized by a special waist segment all these insects in the order possess.

So, the fact that these male ants were flying around my Ant Room meant one thing: Nuptial flight! These male ants were sent out of their nest to mate, and something told me these Ant-Men didn’t come from the outside. They were reproductive members of one of the ant colonies in the Ant Room. Oh boy! It was time to do some detective work and find out which colony these ants belonged to, and more importantly, which kingdom was beginning to have its nuptial flight in my Ant Room. And because of the fact that one of the males was already on its way to the grave, it was a possible sign that it had already mated! Alright, so let’s look at the facts. I knew these males did not belong to Fire Nation because the fire ant male alates look different. They’re much darker in colour and smaller, plus their nuptial flight season had recently finished. These males certainly couldn’t be from the new Polyrhachis ants on El Dragon Island because the colony was too young to be producing male alates already, plus there were none seen when they moved in last week. They couldn’t be from the Dark Knights, my supercolony of black crazy ants, because these males were much too big, the wrong colour, and the entire Dark Knight setup was completely enclosed, so there was no possible way a male could fly out and escape.

So, I immediately considered this was a male alate sent out by the Golden Empire, my yellow crazy ants, because, well, the males were a bright yellowish-orange colour just like the ants of the Golden Empire. But I looked back on some old footage and discovered that the males of this species had elbowed antennae. These Ant-Men didn’t. Their antennae were straight and lacked that joint. Which only left us with two possible ant kingdoms: the Black Panthers, our Diacamma Asian Bullet Ant colony living in the Shire, or their neighbouring young carpenter ant colony inhabiting the Grove. Right off the bat, I highly suspected these males did not come from the carpenter ant colony because they seemed a bit large for the species, and I also felt the carpenter ant colony was still too young to be producing male or queen alates at this point. And so AC Family, that leaves us with one kingdom, the Black Panthers. Ironic that these waspy males came from the Black Panthers in light of their name also being another recent Marvel franchise. And checking back on some old footage sent in by one of you AC Family for use in a past video, these indeed were Diacamma ant males. Wow!

And so, my friends, it’s time to enter the Shire, but beware, these lands have transformed since the last time we were here and have taken on a wild life of their own…

The Shire is no longer a prim and properly sectioned garden. It is now a thickly forested wilderness, and boy is it alive! Various plants and grasses have sprouted seemingly out of nowhere all over the territories, taking advantage of the Shire’s available rich virgin soils and brilliant sunlight. In fact, the new vegetation has been so prolific, I’ve had to do some clear cutting myself just to keep them under control. And look who else has been super prolific in these lands. Masses of springtails, you named the Spring Cleaners, have since taken over the Shire, feasting on decaying material like this leftover watermelon slice. They’re also a big fan of molds and fungi, as you can see. The Spring Cleaners are always the first to hop onto a mini-mushroom!

Whoa! Well, look who’s come to chastise the Spring Cleaners. It’s a Black Panther worker, and like a fiercely armed saber-toothed warrior, she lunges at the squirrel-like Spring Cleaners to get out of her way as she rummages through the carrion. Now although it does seem the Black Panthers find the Spring Cleaners to be an annoyance, they are indeed essential to the Shire, as they help decompose Black Panther leftovers, and they’re great at it. This here used to be a watermelon slice, but has now been reduced to soil fertilizer to give the plants a nutrient boost. I find as long as the Spring Cleaners stay out of the Black Panthers’ way, they’re good, because AC Family, are you ready for this?

Take a look at this! The Black Panthers are feasting on a fresh cockroach carcass like lionesses tearing up a kill. Isn’t that just incredible? The new 4K camera captures such incredible detail! You can see swarms of Spring Cleaners waiting anxiously in the periphery, wanting to get at the meat but keeping their distance in fear of the Black Panthers, who shoo them away. And look at those mites feeding discreetly from the kill. Wow! Seeing what the world is like with this amount of magnification and clarity suddenly makes the micro world seem like a scary and almost prehistoric place, don’t you think?!

It seems in the Shire, the Black Panthers are at the top of the hierarchy, but when their numbers are low, the Spring Cleaners and mites summon up the bravery to move in and mooch off fresh Black Panther food, as you can see here. This Black Panther is missing an antennae, kind of like having one eye, but it makes her super aggravated and extra selfish. She makes no hesitation to lunge at the Spring Cleaners that get too close. But not all Black Panthers are in monster mode. A lot of them are in house chores mode. This Black Panther is disposing of some trash. She wanders to a location far from the nest to deposit it in the colony’s garbage site. The Black Panthers are quite clean and disciplined with where they dispose of their garbage. After all, it attracts those pesky Spring Cleaners.

And here is suitable. Some food for the Spring Cleaners, but far from the nest. The Spring Cleaners love to get at all the little bits of food the Black Panthers miss. I see them like prolific rodents nibbling at cartilage of leftover chicken wings. But guys, get this. The Spring Cleaners aren’t the only opportunists in the Shire. When macro food isn’t available, the Black Panthers will stalk micro meals, i.e., the Spring Cleaners, for a tasty bite-sized treat. In fact, the Black Panthers love to hunt and eat Springtails, almost like it’s a favourite pastime! Watch them hunt the Springtails down. It’s not easy! They’re not called “springtails” for nothing. The Springtails have an abdominal, tail-like appendage called a “furcula” that is folded beneath their body and releases like a spring at will, allowing them to spring away in times of danger, like when Black Panthers are lunging at them. Even when two Black Panthers team up, it still doesn’t make catching the Springtails easier. I’ve only been lucky enough to catch the ants capturing a Springtail just a few times, and each time, I feel it was completely by fluke.

And finally, some of the Black Panthers are preoccupied with construction. I caught workers bringing back pieces of debris to the nest and watched as they arranged the pieces around the opening of the nest and even brought some inside. In fact, it seems these past few days, they’ve been quite busy with nest building. AC Family, have a look! Each piece is hand-selected… well, mandible-selected, but chosen nonetheless to act as a sort of brick in their grand ant brickwork making up their nest. It just amazes me how patient, determined, and meticulous they are.

But now that we’re here at the nest, the whole reason we’ve come to the Shire is to see what’s been happening with the Black Panthers since we last checked up on them over a month ago, and see if we can find evidence that these wasp-like males we caught truly came from them. What was especially interesting was that if these males were indeed Black Panther males, it meant that there was someone in the colony egg-laying. So, alright, if you’re new to the Black Panthers, you might be asking why that would even be a question. Of course, there is a queen egg-laying, right? Well, not necessarily. Let me catch you all up to speed.

Their species, known as Diacamma rugosum, is unique in the ant world because they’re kind of like the missing link between the regular ants of today whose colonies typically have an egg-laying queen and her workers, and the ancestral wasps who decided to come together and form a colony millions of years ago. The reason I say they’re the missing link is because Diacamma rugosum ants do not have queens. Their colonies are composed of all worker ants! That’s right, the Black Panthers are a queenless colony.

So get this, the way these ants reproduce is by way of what is called a gamergate, or a dominant worker ant. This dominant worker ant assumes the role as the primary egg-layer of the colony and secures her position as gamergate by going as far as neutering new worker ants freshly emerged from their pupae by ripping off body parts known as gemmae, which make worker ants of this species fertile and capable of being a gamergate. It’s very cutthroat in Black Panther society, but the reigning gamergate makes sure all of her fellow worker ants are rendered submissive and infertile forever in order to serve her and the colony.

Now, the Black Panthers here were collected from the wild as just a few members, and even if there were a few larvae present when they came to us, I still did not know if the gamergate was collected, too. They could have all just been infertile non-gamergate workers, with the gamergate successfully escaping the person who collected them.

Now fast forward to a few weeks ago, we saw no brood in sight, so I figured either the colony was hiding all the colony’s brood somewhere in the nest and the gamergate was indeed somewhere here, or perhaps there really was no gamergate in the colony from the get-go, and the larvae we saw when they first arrived went on to become adult workers, and hopefully become a gamergate. In both cases, it’s great news for us because it means someone in the Black Panthers is currently laying eggs, and it would explain the unexpected presence of the males we caught.

So today, as we peek into the Black Panthers’ nest, I hope to see brood, eggs, larvae, pupae… anything to show evidence of a gamergate… and if these male ants came from the Black Panthers, I hope to see males in the nest. So here we go, AC Family. Are you ready? The nest lays here behind this rock rampart. Let’s move it aside to access the interior.

Alright now AC Family, brace yourselves. What I saw next inside the nest blew me away! O M G! I was shocked to see in one of the rooms the Black Panthers and huge ravenous larvae feeding voraciously from ripped cockroach body parts. My jaw hit the floor as I watched the sight. I have never in my life seen anything like this. First off, I have never seen ant larvae so mobile. Black Panther babies were like rabid meat-eating worms! Just look at them feeding from the cockroach leg. The Black Panther workers, also feeding from cockroach meat, attended lovingly to the larvae, repositioning them in optimal spots and positions to make sure they acquire all the meat they can get. This was a sight that was both fascinating and admittedly, slightly repulsive! Sorry, I have a mild worm phobia. But check this out! If you look closely, each of those ant larvae have a head, like a caterpillar! Unbelievable! I couldn’t look away.

Speaking of worms, I looked into another chamber and spotted an earthworm! Wow! The Black Panther’s nest was truly becoming bioactive and I loved it! Scanning more rooms, I spotted more roach meat, and low and behold, a male Black Panther. AC Family, the males we caught were indeed Black Panther spawn. Alright, now let’s assess what all of this means.

AC Family, are you ready for this? This entire situation gets even more complicated, so I hope you guys can hear me out and follow along. First and foremost, the presence of these larvae does mean that there is a gamergate in the colony laying eggs, which is good news, but the bad news is, it doesn’t necessarily mean the gamergate is fertilized. Now this is bad news because it means this ant colony cannot possibly live on and grow. Confused? I know. Let me explain: so unfertilized eggs in the ant world actually can develop into adult ants, but the catch is, they develop into male ants!

Prepare to be mind-blown, AC Family! We’re delving into the complex world of ant genetics here! In humans and most animals, to get a male baby, you simply need a Y chromosome from the sperm fertilizing an egg. If the sperm happens to not carry this Y chromosome, the person or animal will develop into a female. Gender is determined by the presence of this Y chromosome. Now in ants, male and female determination does not work this way. Ant gender depends not on what chromosomes end up combining during gamete union but the number of chromosomes the egg ends up having. In ants, to get a female, you need two sets of chromosomes, and to get a male, you only need one.

So if a male ant successfully mates with a queen or gamergate, the chromosomes from his sperm cell will combine with the chromosomes from the egg it fertilizes, and it will result in what is called a diploid egg, meaning it will have two sets of chromosomes—one from the male and one from the female—and 100% will always become a female ant, be it a worker or a queen. But, AC Family, are you ready for this? If the queen or gamergate lays an egg without having mated yet, or releases an egg that for some reason is not fertilized by a male’s sperm, the egg will be haploid, having only half the amount of chromosomes, missing the sperm cell’s chromosomes from the male, and this haploid egg will always develop into a male ant!

Isn’t that crazy, guys? Think about what this means for a sec. All male ants are only half-brothers to their sisters, and even crazier, no male ant in the world has a father! If Luke Skywalker were an ant, there would be no Ant Darth Vader! If Maury Povich were an ant, he could only use his famous line “You are the father!” based on DNA tests on female ants. If humans were ants, only girls and women could celebrate Father’s Day, and fathers wouldn’t be able to enjoy Father’s Day because they’d all be dead by the time their kids were born, kids of which would all be female. And you may be surprised to know that this is actually also the case for bees and wasps, which means if Ant-Man were more ant-like, he’d have no reason to celebrate Father’s Day, but if the Wasp were more wasp-like, she could! Haha! Isn’t this all mind-blowing?!

This is why all ant keepers know that if you catch a queen ant and place her into a test tube, and she only produces males, then you know she hadn’t mated during nuptial flight and sadly can’t possibly produce a colony. The ants born from an unfertilized queen ant would all be males, and in the ant world, the males do nothing but sit around in the nest, eat, and wait for mating season. They don’t do any work, they can’t construct nests, they don’t care for the young, nor cater to the queen. They just take up space and resources, but of course, are still essential for the continuation of the species because without them, there would be no worker ants or queens, i.e., female ants.

Alright, so going back to the Black Panthers, based on all the things we’ve seen so far, yes, we now know there is a gamergate here laying eggs, but we still don’t know if she’s been fertilized by a male ant. She could be a gamergate shooting out haploid eggs that are all becoming males! It’s sad because the ideal situation is that the Black Panther gamergate is the original fertilized gamergate who founded this entire colony, producing workers and now males temporarily for the season. But worst-case scenario, the gamergate is one of the stray larvae who came to us with the collection, and eventually grew up to become a gamergate, a virgin gamergate, laying unfertilized haploid eggs which are all becoming male, meaning the Black Panthers are doomed to eventually all die out.

Could all these larvae be male? Man, I hope not. Let’s cross our fingers and hope some, if not all, of these are female worker ant larvae, and our Black Panthers are doing extremely well!

OK, AC Family but wait! That’s not all. There’s more! I know some of you might be thinking, but one of the males we caught was on its way to dying. Does this mean it mated? This was actually my next thought. If we did have a virgin gamergate in the nest, could it be that this male, born from the virgin gamergate, mated with that gamergate, his mother, thereby turning her into a fertilized gamergate now capable of producing female workers? That would be great!

Now I know the idea of mother and son mating sounds bad to us humans, but you must remember the odd and strange world of ant genetics. Our Dark Knights, our supercolony of black crazy ants, were able to get from just two egg-laying queens to hundreds of egg-laying queens because of the unique ability of the virgin daughter queens to mate with their birth brothers, due to these birth brothers being in some inexplicable way genetically unrelated to their sisters! So who knows? Maybe in Diacamma ants, mothers mating incestually with their sons is genetically healthy and a part of Diacamma life. So little is studied about Diacamma ants and their genetics. AC Family, truth is, we are actually among the first in the world to peek into the workings of this species’ biology and life cycle. Our Black Panthers here are, in fact, crucial to scientific research, and we are all important myrmecologists.

So, at least we learned from all of this that our Black Panthers do have a gamergate, but not necessarily a fertilized one. The most we can do is wait and see if the Black Panthers seem to increase in numbers over time, which I hope they do, or if they eventually all die out, leaving us with a colony of just male Diacamma ants.

Currently, I’m still finding random male Black Panthers around my room at night and have even caught males leaving the nest, and some of them do show signs of dying pretty quickly. Inside, I hope it means they’d mated with a virgin gamergate. I hope to see a Black Panther boom in population over the coming weeks. I will surely let you guys know.

All males that I collect, I now place into the Shire, even the dead ones. I was curious to see how the Black Panthers would react to their deceased brothers. Would the Black Panthers bury them like they do with fellow sisters? Let’s find out. A worker comes along, and her presence causes one of the males to miraculously come to his feet, but surprisingly the worker seems unwilling to help him. How odd, but finally, the worker decides to take the other male, further along on his dying process, and what? Surprisingly, she’s decided to take him into the nest. I wonder what for.

Peeking into the nest, I followed the worker in, and as I suspected, the Black Panthers were going to consume him. Wow! AC Family, just wow. I understand why this would be of nutritional benefit to the colony, but I think we can safely say today that Black Panther society is truly just crazy, twisted, and oh so different.

What do you guys think? Anyway, as I watch Ant-Man and The Wasp, I bet I will likely think about the Black Panthers at some point in the movie because, as the world watches these two superheroes fighting side by side, embodying two different insects, I, as well as all of you AC Family, now know the real backstory, and that Ant-Man and the Wasp are actually much more closely related superheroes than the rest of the world realizes. And the Black Panthers happen to be their missing link… and if you’re a Marvel fan, that is an ironically weird thought.

Oh yeah, and one other thing, speaking of world premieres, there is actually some news that might make you guys very happy. AC Family, making their world debut on this channel, behold! I am pleased to introduce to you our brand new…

Haha! Alright AC Family, did you enjoy today’s episode? Man, it’s actually much harder and longer to edit these huge 4K videos, but it’s so worth it because from now on we can be immersed deeper into the world of the ants than ever before. It’s also perfect for the welcoming of yet another, yes another new colony to the channel, and guys, it’s one that many of you voted for and wanted! Man, I am super excited about this! You won’t want to miss what’s ahead, so hit that subscribe button and bell icon now, so you don’t miss out on the introduction of the new inhabitants to our Ant Room, and hit the LIKE button every single time, including now! There is also some big news on the new Polyrhachis ants on El Dragon Island, but more on that in their next update video!

By the way, if you’re new to the channel, I have created a special FULL STORY LINE playlist with the complete stories of all your favourite ant colonies on this channel. You can now watch how each colony began, follow their epic journey, and better appreciate how far we’ve all come watching their lives unfold before our very eyes. It’s just mind-blowing how epic the daily lives of ants are!

AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would just like to watch extended play 4K footage of the Black Panthers and surrounding creatures feeding on roach carcasses. It’s absolutely crazy footage, guys, so check it out!

And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week! Last week we asked:

Why was unclogging the spring pool in the Golden Springs an important thing to do?

Congratulations to Konrad’s World, who correctly answered: The water was not being filtered.

Congratulations Konrad’s World! You just won a free ebook handbook from our shop!

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

What determines gender in ants?

Leave your answer in the comments section and you could win a free Hybrid Nest 2.0 Tetramorium version, the newest ant farm which just debuted at 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!