Welcome to AntsCanada’s latest adventure, where we explore incredible ant species at the American Museum of Natural History—join us for a fascinating look at Honeypot and Leaf-Cutter ants!

Today we check out two very epic ant setups at the American Museum of Natural History (Susan & Peter Solomon J. Family Insectarium), located in New York City USA. The species on display are Honeypot ants (Myrmecocystus sp.) and a species of leafcutter ant. The two setups are contrasting as one is more naturalistic and the other much more archetectural in design. Hope you enjoy this vlog as I take you through these two setups and talk about the biology and behaviours of both ant colonies.

Two Really Cool Ant Exhibits in the USA

What’s up AC Family! Welcome to another video. This is AntsCanada here, and as you can see, I’m not in the ant room like usual. I’m actually here in New York City, and I am currently at the American Museum of Natural History. Now, I wanted to check out this place because here in their new wing, they’ve got an Insectarium, and in the Insectarium, I heard that they have two very cool ant setups of two very cool ant species. So, I’m going to check out those setups now, talk a little bit about those ants, and take you guys along. I’m so excited, so stay tuned!

Alright, so this Insectarium has a really cool layout. We’ve got live ants in terrariums, we’ve got preserved ants in cases, we’ve also got displays—hey, awesome Weaver ants on screen! Honeypot ants! But let’s see if we can find the formicaria, the ant farms. Here we are, ants, bees, and wasps!

Oh, here we are, guys. So this is the first species of ant that I wanted to show you. This here is a setup of the very famous Myrmecocystus ants, AKA Honeypot ants, and I love their setup here. They’ve got an outworld at the top, and then they have their nest at the bottom. Now, before we check out the nest at the bottom, let’s have a look at their outworld.

So, in ant keeping, we call the outworld the “outworld” because it’s their outer world—the area where the ants can forage, gather food, drink, and hunt, as well as dump their garbage and dead bodies. Now, it looks like they’ve got a bottle cap of honey and apple here, and you can see the workers wandering around now foraging for food. They’ve also got a little tower of honey here, and it looks like there is the entrance to their nest. See it, guys? That is awesome!

These ants are great. Now, I’m going to go down into the nest. You might notice the upper part, the outworld, is designed almost like an arid desert habitat. That’s because these ants are from more arid climates. The reason why they’re called Honeypot ants is because, do you see those round balls? Those are called repletes. Those are actual worker ants. Oh wow, look, they’re all over the top as well. See them? They are living stores for food. They’re just full of liquefied food, and they dispense it slowly as the colony needs.

Now, because they live in arid areas, there are periods of the year where there isn’t enough food for the colony. So what they’ll do is they’ll gorge and eat as much as they can, and then fill up these repletes full of food. Isn’t that incredible? Wow, I love it.

There are so many repletes here. What a setup! Sadly, these Honeypot ants have never been native to where I live, so I’ve never been able to keep them, but they are super cool. Look at how huge they can get. Isn’t that amazing? Wow! There’s the brood—you can see right there, all those babies. That looks like a hydration platform. Lots of babies there.

I was looking around for the queen, and there she is! Do you see her? She’s right there. Awesome, guys! Sorry about the flickering you see on screen—it’s due to the lighting that they’ve used for the setup. But you guys get the point. Oh, and there! There’s a worker feeding her right now through trophallaxis. That’s mouth-to-mouth food transfer that social insects do to distribute food throughout the colony.

Here you can see dead crickets—that’s the protein source that they feed the ants here in the museum. And wow, they’re even placing larvae on the dead crickets to feed. How neat! This here is a very, very impressive colony. How I would love to keep Myrmecocystus ants, but sadly again, they’re not native to where I live.

However, carpenter ants have repletes as well, not as profound as these repletes, but they have workers that are fed a bunch of food, and they blow up like a balloon. I have a few carpenter ant colonies coming up in the ant room, so hopefully, we get to see some repletes! But very, very cool colony!

Alright AC Family, let’s go see the other ant colony that I was looking for. Here we go, guys! Oh man, I have done videos on leaf-cutter ants, these kinds of ants before. This here is a total goals setup as far as ant keeping goes. This is the leaf-cutter ant exhibit here at the museum, and it looks like this area is where they keep all the plants.

Let’s see. Now, this is a cool take on the leaf-cutter ant setup because usually, they’re displayed in more naturalistic setups, like a terrarium that looks like a jungle, but in this case, they’re actually growing the plants hydroponically, it looks like. And then there’s a moving moat that keeps the ants on this island. I don’t see that many leaf-cutter ants currently. I just see a few—like, see them? See that small one scurrying there?

But I’m guessing it’s because it’s fall now here in New York, and the ants are probably going into a hibernation sort of phase. That’s my guess. Now, what is this here? Wow, this is a pretty, pretty interesting setup.

Okay, I’m guessing this just allows the ants to wander through here. Okay, it makes for interesting observation. Oh, I see what they’re doing here! Okay, so AC Family, get this: they come to this area to clip pieces of foliage, and then they start climbing this jungle gym area. They have to travel all this way up and down. See? So the ants really have kind of a far distance to travel to go back to the nest, which is kind of what the ants have to do in the wild. They’ve got to often forage far distances away from the nest to harvest their pieces of foliage.

I’ll talk about what they use those foliage pieces for in a bit. You see, then they crawl across this platform here, all the way here, see? All the way down here, through here, across this platform here, all the way here, and then up this sort of bar here to the top. And then once they’re at the top, they travel all the way across here.

Wow, this setup really maximizes the viewing and observation for their behavior of carrying pieces of leaves back to their nest. They crawl across here, here, oh, upside down! See that ant carrying a piece of leaf? I’m sure when the colony is very active and there are lots of ants across this highway, it’s very impressive.

So, they crawl across here, all the way here, and then down this metal path and into their nest. Wow, guys, check out this nest! What a cool take on the leaf-cutter ant setup. Isn’t that amazing?

This isn’t by any means a naturalistic setup, but still a cool setup nonetheless. For those of you who are new to leaf-cutter ants, what they do is they cut pieces of leaves from foliage, bring those pieces of leaves back to their nest, which is usually underground. And in the chambers underground, they chew up the leaves, and then they create this sort of mash, and from the mash grows a fungus that they eat. So all these ants are actually fungus farmers—they’re fungivores!

They eat the special fungus that they farm from pieces of leaves that they chew up. It’s really incredible, and they have these massive, very impressive fungus comb structures. You see, the ants are very, very skilled at growing this fungus.

Now, what’s amazing is this fungus is found nowhere else in nature except in the nests of these leaf-cutter ants. So this species of fungus and the ants have a mutualistic symbiotic relationship. They can’t exist in nature without each other, which is very interesting.

What’s even more interesting is that, just like human farmers, these ants actually have to worry about a weed fungus that attacks their edible fungus. The ants routinely have to kill this weed fungus. And guys, get this: in order to kill the weed fungus, they each have a special patch on their head where Actinomyces bacteria live. The bacteria on this patch on their head produce almost like an antibiotic, a sort of chemical that kills the weed fungus. Isn’t that amazing?

So the bacteria on their heads, the ants, and the fungus actually have a symbiotic relationship altogether. It’s really complex how the systems of these leaf-cutter ants actually work. And it’s amazing how they’ve really designed this setup—I’m really impressed.

Now, it looks like some of the chambers are empty, and they’re just starting, like see that one right there? That fungus ball is just starting, and that will fill up over time. See? Ooh, what an interesting take on the leaf-cutter ant setup. I love this so much.

It looks like the chambers start off with a little bit of soil. I guess the people at the museum maybe place soil in there, some moistened substrate, so that the ants start deciding to create a fungus comb in there. And if I were to guess, the queen is in this chamber. Look how big that chamber is—that’s one big fungus ball!

Now, in other museum leaf-cutter ant setups that I’ve been to, the curators or the myrmecologists or resident entomologists have told me that the queen will move from chamber to chamber, just depending on where she wants to go based on conditions like humidity or heat, whatnot. So, I’m guessing it’s probably the same here. But if I were to guess, the queen would be in here.

These leaf-cutter ants are polymorphic, which means they have workers of different sizes. Like if you look carefully, you’ll see some workers are really large with big heads—those are the majors. And then some are really small—the minors.

And there’s the queen! Look how big she is! She is so much larger than the workers. See how much larger she is than her kids? It’s just incredible, and they crawl all over her, protecting her and helping her along. And although it doesn’t look like the colony is completely active currently, again probably because of the time of the year, I’m sure in the summertime, when the ants are all traveling across this path and all across there, this setup looks really, really cool for all of these guests.

You know what? I would love to create a massive setup like this, maybe not for leaf-cutter ants, because leaf-cutter ants also do not exist where I live, but maybe for weaver ants, which do exist where I live. We’ll see! But this is definitely inspiring and super-duper cool.

So, guys, tell me—which of the two exhibits did you like the most? Did you like the leaf-cutter ant exhibit, or did you like this Honeypot ant exhibit more? Smaller, but equally as cool. Let me know in the comments.

Thank you guys so much for watching! And guys, actually, the reason why I’m here in the US is because tomorrow, that’s Sunday, October the 22nd, I’m actually having an AntsCanada meet and greet in New Jersey! And so, if you are watching before, well, Sunday, October 22nd, you can even actually sign up for tickets on October 22nd, on the Sunday, by visiting therchild.com.

By all means, go—I’d love to meet you. I believe you can also get tickets at the door, but you will still need to sign up through the website at therchild.com.

Alright, guys, thank you so much, and keep up all that ant love! If you guys would like to see these exhibits in person, again it’s here in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History. This is AntsCanada signing out—it’s ant love forever!