Have you ever stopped to watch ants perform a large task which extended over several minutes? It is actually quite relaxing and therapeutic. This week we watch our Golden Empire, our Yellow Crazy Ant colony transporting fish food from a container to a nest.

Enjoy getting lost in an ant trance in this week’s episode of the AntsCanada Ant Channel. Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, & SHARE, as well as SUBSCRIBE if you haven’t yet. Ant love forever!

Time Lapse: Ants Carrying Fish Pellets Into the Nest

Greetings, A.C. Family.

We’ve got a special video for this week. And boy, is it satisfying… Well, if you’re an ant lover like me, that is. Because we received such a great response to our previous video several months back of our black crazy ants, the Dark Knights, drinking drops of honey, I wanted to do a similar video this week. A lot of you guys have commented, saying watching the ants just doing their thing is super relaxing.

So this week, something a little different: Our Golden Empire simply carrying fish food from a container to their nest. I know it’s odd, but this video will relax you and put you in an ‘ant trance’ as I also talk about the Golden Empire, their society, their behaviors, and more. So keep on watching until the end. A.C. Family, let’s sit back and watch our Golden Empire and what the Koreans call a “mukbang” in this ant-watching episode of the AntsCanada Ant Channel.

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Please subscribe to my channel and hit the bell icon. [whisper] Welcome to the A.C. Family. [whisper] Bon appétit. Let’s start by laying down our small container of fish food right here, into the Hacienda Del Dorado.

It isn’t long before a couple of workers discover our food and inform the rest of the colony that they’ve discovered the goods. And so starts the hypnotic process of food collection. Let’s watch. They say keeping tropical fish tanks can lower people’s blood pressure and stress. In my opinion and personal experience, ant-watching has a similar relaxation effect.

We receive so many comments in our hidden videos every week, which are very much like this video, about how these time-lapse and seemingly monotonous activities of the ants are relaxing, even proving therapeutic for some of our viewers dealing with anxiety, ADD, hypertension, and other physical conditions.

If you’re like me, you could watch the ants do this for hours and hours and not get bored. But I’ve time-lapsed this video so you could watch the complete process in a shorter amount of time. This is their normal speed. But let’s get back to the timeline, shall we?

I found that the Golden Empire, our yellow crazy ants, are quite easy to feed, and they accept a wide range of different foods. It’s no wonder this species has been so successful at invading most tropical parts of the world. Yellow crazy ants are known as pan-tropical, meaning they can be found in all areas with a tropical climate.

We don’t exactly know for sure where this species originated, but scientists suspect that they originated in West Africa and have migrated across seas to all other tropical areas via human activities like the transport of plants and goods. They hitched rides on our boats and cargo, and the colonies were able to conquer countries and out-compete and displace other ants. They’re truly an empire that has succeeded as far as invasiveness and scope.

The species recently gained a lot of popularity due to a feature in a wildlife documentary, which popularized yellow crazy ants as killers of native crabs on Christmas Island. Part of the reason for their success is not only due to their vivacious and ravenous nature but also due to the fact that they accept multiple queens, and colonies can fuse together, creating huge super colonies.

In fact, the Golden Empire here is actually the result of three yellow crazy ant colonies combined. If you’re new to the channel, feel free to check out our yellow crazy ant playlist to watch how this colony, our Golden Empire, came to be. Look at how the ants carry each individual piece. Keep in mind, those are heavy.

It would be comparable to us lifting boulders, carrying them up over and down a vertical surface, then onto the nest. The ants are super quick and effective. I just love watching the ants do this. It’s kind of like watching an hourglass, but cooler. It’s just amazing to think that the ants can carry out operations like this in such a short amount of time and with the simplest of communication.

A.C. Family, have any of you guys taken the time to watch ants work? What was it like? For me, relaxation via observation of the ants working may be one of the practical benefits of ant-keeping. It seems like the ants are carrying the food into a certain chamber underneath this driftwood. As the ants carry the food back, they lay down a pheromone trail all the way back into the nest, to show ants leaving the nest exactly where to find the food.

This trail keeps on getting reinforced as more and more ants return to the nest with food while also adding to that pheromonal trail. The thicker that trail becomes, the more eager the ants join in on the campaign and head out to bring back the fish food.

Want to hear something interesting, A.C. Family? So the ants themselves don’t have the ability to chew up this completely dry fish food. These adult ants simply don’t have the chewing mouthparts. Adult ants are able to consume mashes and liquids much easier than these super dry items like this fish food.

So I expect what these ants of the Golden Empire are going to do is either:

1.They’ll store the food in a very moist chamber of their nest until the fish food softens so they can eat it easier, or

2.They feed it to their larvae, the babies who actually do have the chewing mouthparts to eat solid foods and then feast on the chewed-up, pre-processed foods that the larvae regurgitate. Isn’t that neat?

This latter method, which we know ants do, means the babies eat first and then the adults. Quite a different feeding system that seems to work for the ants. Almost done now. The entire process took just about half an hour to complete.

For those of you who would like to get into ant-keeping and are a bit squeamish about keeping live feeder insects like crickets, mealworms, or roaches in your home, if you can get your hands on a high-quality fish food like this, you’re set. Your ants will be able to get all the protein from the fish and other seafood ingredients in the fish food.

Okay, A.C. Family, so you can truly enjoy this relaxing ant-watching experience, I’m just going to leave you alone now for just a few minutes so you can watch the ants and get lost in an ant trance. I’ll be back in about three minutes. Enjoy.

And the final crumbs are collected, and the fish food supply is done. So what happens now is the ants that come to the container and find out that there’s actually no food, like the pheromone trail promised, simply return back to the nest but don’t leave a pheromone trail. This causes the original pheromonal trail to weaken over time, so fewer and fewer ants end up coming to the container in search of food.

And there you have it. So what do you say? Is that relaxing? Let me know if you like these kinds of videos or if you have any suggestions of other time-lapses you guys would like to see. Tell me in the comment section. Thanks for joining us for another week, A.C. Family. It’s ant love forever.

Okay, A.C. Family, A.C. in our colony, here’s your hidden video of this video, non-time-lapsed. Honestly, in my opinion, the non-time-lapsed version is actually much more satisfying than this video. It’s just longer, and now it’s time for the A.C. Question of the Week.

Last week, we asked: explain how any two living things, plants, or animals benefit each other in the Hacienda Del Dorado. Congratulations to Jaden 7654321 Clash of Clans, who correctly answered, “The aphids give the ants honeydew in exchange for protection.” Congratulations, Jaden. You just won a free A.C. Test Tube Portal from our shop.

For this week’s A.C. Question of the Week, we ask: What does pan-tropical mean? Leave your answer in the comments section, and you could win a free eBook handbook from our shop. Hope you can subscribe to the channel and give this video a thumbs up if you liked it. Leave me a comment, as I read through as many of them as I can, and remember, we upload a new video every Saturday at 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

It’s ant love forever.