Greetings Ant Lovers,

My pet marauder ant colony named the Leviathans needed a new space to live, as they were starting to overcrowd in their test tube home, so I created for them an Ant Mansion and placed it into their terrarium. I waited to see if they would move in, or if they would choose to remain in the cramped, problematic home they were currently occupying. What the ants did was surprising. Hope you enjoy this week’s episode! Ant love forever! This video was shot in 4K Ultra HD resolution.

Will Ants Choose a Mansion or a Tiny Shack?

Guys, check this out!

If given the choice between a massive luxurious mansion or a tiny, not-so-luxurious shack,

which would ants end up choosing?

You would think the answer seems simple, right?

Well, not so fast.

So check this out: this here is my Marauder Ant colony, whom we on the channel call the Leviathans,

who live in their terrarium called Marauder’s Alley.

Now, I had the grand idea to feed them a dead baby mouse a couple weeks back,

and after that, the colony totally exploded due to all the protein.

Let me show you!

Opening their test tube.

That right there is the royal queen, whom we call the Titanic Empress.

Now, last week, I felt she and the entire colony were just about ready to move out of their test tube,

because 1) the colony seemed to be running out of space,

2) the ants had moved so much soil out of their test tube,

that I could see it was negatively affecting the nest’s moisture levels,

with uppermost portions stick-dry and unable to get moisture from the lower levels of the test tube,

which looked too wet and gross!

In fact, look at what I’ve been noticing this week:

The ants have been crowding around their drinking water station like crazy,

probably desperate for water from all the nest dryness,

and finally 3) in last week’s video, the ants were starting to go off feed,

which scared me because these ants usually eat a lot.

It was clear their current tiny test tube home was slowly killing them.

So, I resolved to draw up blueprints to create for them a new and upgraded home,

a massive 5-foot-long terrarium designed like a sea monster made of rock—plans of which I’ll show you guys shortly.

But I needed a few more days to make this, and I knew the Leviathans couldn’t wait another day

and needed to move out of their test tube ASAP.

And so, that’s where the Ant Mansion comes in.

This M-ant-sion, hehe get it, was technically perfect,

offered a ton more digging room and nesting space,

had perfect moisture levels, and was by theory exactly what the ants needed.

But what the ants ended up doing was completely not what I expected at all and will surprise you, as well!

Will the ants choose to move into the tantalizing ant mansion I made for them,

or will they choose to remain in the simple and tiny home they’ve been living in their whole lives,

despite all its issues?

You’re about to find out, here on the AntsCanada Ant Channel.

Please SUBSCRIBE to the channel and hit the BELL ICON!

Welcome to the AC Family!

Enjoy!

AC Family, after uploading last week’s very concerning video,

I went straight to work at building the ants’ temporary holding nest.

I was scared the colony was possibly dying due to an insufficient nesting space.

This species, after all, is one of the hardest ant species to keep in captivity,

and I was scared of making a mistake.

But the ants really surprised me in the end.

Despite me creating plans to help them, I had no idea all along,

they had some plans of their own which blew my mind.

So as always, do stay tuned until the very end for a certain surprise reveal.

Now before we see if our Leviathans move into their new mansion,

I have to show you what the colony looks like right now.

They’re just growing by the day, guys!

The colony at this point is just insane.

I mean, other than fire ants,

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a species so exponentially explosive in numbers as our Leviathans have been.

It makes me wonder how massive these colonies actually get in the wild.

I looked for the queen, the Titanic Empress,

and there she was appearing right in front of my camera,

with her entourage of tiny minions cloaking her protectively.

Look at her eye!

Such a stunning queen lady, not to mention highly protected, too.

There was a submajor and a major spotting her every move.

Then my eyes focused on the larvae.

It was insane watching the ants move all the larvae around,

as they clamored to organize them in batches according to age,

whether or not they’ve been fed, which needed more moisture, less moisture, and even type.

Look!

There’s a huge major larva!

Cool, right?!

Batching all this brood takes some pretty crazy organization skills,

and a highly effective system in order to ensure every single baby is cared for.

There are some ants feeding on a seed.

But as I gazed into the queen’s chamber, observing all the organized chaos,

I began to wonder how the ants were feeling in this test tube.

Were they too cramped?

Did they feel too dry?

Too wet?

Was it starting to foul up, as we suspected in last week’s video?

How long would it take to move all this brood out to their new Ant Mansion?

So many questions, but little did I know,

I would soon get the rather unexpected answers.

AC Family, behold the structure that would become our Leviathans’ new M-ant-sion.

It’s a glass cookie jar.

And it was time to get to work.

I got my bag of bioactive coco fiber,

the same digging medium I used for their current test tube, and began to fill the glass jar with it.

I made sure to really pack it down so that if and when the ants would burrow into it,

there would be some structure and integrity.

Once done, I placed the lid back onto the jar and proceeded to remove some of the decor from Marauder’s Alley,

then placed some of the rocks over to the other side to make space for the M-ant-sion.

Finally, I placed in the M-ant-sion and partially buried the bottom part of it into the substrate,

and just like that, the M-ant-sion was in.

The Leviathans now had access to their brand new luxurious massive home,

and I couldn’t wait to see how the ants would react to it.

And look!

An ant had already scoped it out and was heading back to the colony to tell them about it.

The first few ants came curiously to inspect the opening.

“This smells strange.

I wonder where this massive structure came from?

Let’s check out the darkness of the inside, shall we?”

The ants proceeded to enter the opening with extreme caution.

For all they knew, this was a trap from some predator or a human wanting to eradicate them.

I squirted a bit of water into the opening to make it more tantalizing,

and this really brought the ants to come checking things out.

A big crowd had learned of the M-ant-sion now,

and I’ve seen this process happen hundreds of times in my many years of ant keeping.

Soon one of the ants will have a brilliant idea to start digging into the M-ant-sion,

and once ready, the colony would be shipping out all the brood and even the queen from the castle!

Right now, the castle entrance looks calm,

but I couldn’t wait to see the procession of ants and brood and queen pouring out of these castle entrances

to move into their M-ant-sion.

But while waiting for the swarm to emerge from the castle,

I want to take a quick moment to show you guys my plans for our beloved Leviathans’ future terrarium.

Leviathan terrarium

So this here is my plan for the Leviathan’s future terrarium.

When I showed it to you guys briefly in last week’s video, a lot of you loved it,

but perhaps misinterpreted the drawing.

Let me break it down for you.

First, many of you commented saying you thought the creature you see in the terrarium is a dragon.

Well, close.

It’s a sea monster.

You see, I looked up the name “Leviathan,” and according to Encyclopedia Britannica,

Leviathan comes from the Hebrew Livyatan, which comes from a root that means “to twist, turn, wind, or coil.”

Today, the name is often used to refer generally to a sea monster or to any gigantic powerful thing.

And so, I took this definition and came up with this drawing.

Basically, it’s a sea monster, but check this out!

So the ants will be able to nest on the left side of the terrarium,

sandwiched between glass so we can still see the underground chambers,

just as we’ve been Big Brother-ing our Leviathans within their test tube.

But AC Family, here’s the cool part:

My plan was for the ants to be able to emerge from the sea monster’s open mouth,

then trail along the sea monster’s body, twisting and turning down a path to get their food

placed somewhere along the beast’s body—fitting for the Leviathans’ very name and trailing behavior.

Now, some of you mentioned that as much as you liked this design,

you preferred more natural setups,

but I think some of you may have missed that the entire beast will be made of rock and naturalistic constituents,

and not like a big figurine.

I also plan for fog to periodically drool from the mouth when hydrating the nest portion.

Also, the entire front will be open and glassless,

so this will be a rather open-concept type setup,

seeing as unlike fire ants, these ants don’t seem very hard to contain and aren’t always looking to escape.

I could add water at the bottom to make this a paludarium,

but I’m unsure if these ants do well around bodies of water.

I did this with my past fire ant setups because I know they can float on water and are okay living around it.

But for our Leviathans, I didn’t want to take that risk

lest we have majors slipping into the water below and drowning.

So what do you guys think of this design?

I think it should turn out pretty epic—or at least I hope it does.

Anyway, it will take me another week or so to complete,

but meanwhile, I was hoping our Leviathans would start moving into their new M-ant-sion.

Let’s see how they’re doing.

Alright, well it did look like the ants had some kind of plan going on.

A lot of ants seemed to be preoccupied with some operation now starting.

I even saw ants bringing out grains of coco fiber,

which meant they had already begun digging.

Yay! My plans were working!

By Day 2, the ants were still working.

Alright.

I wondered how long it would take the ants to build a space big enough to move in.

Day 3: still working.

Day 4: still working, and ants not having moved in yet.

Day 5: still working, and no move.

Day 6: still working, and no move.

What struck me as peculiar was the fact that the ants were taking so long to move.

I could have shone a bright light onto the test tube to really drive them out of their test tube,

but I didn’t want to do that,

and I’m glad I didn’t, because little did I know, the ants knew exactly what they were doing.

Feeding the ants

Eventually, I had to feed the ants as I usually do,

and for this feeding, I gave them some mealworm pupae.

This was my first time feeding mealworm pupae to the ants,

and I totally forgot to pre-crush them,

so they struggled a bit as the ants swarmed around to devour them and sting them to death.

Oops.

The ants did their usual shtick of piling on gravel and debris onto the mealworm pupae.

Check out that old discarded roach exoskeleton they’re using to bury the pupae with.

And then, suddenly it occurred to me.

Hey, the ants’ appetite was back!

The ants had become hungry again, which was a total relief!

My guess was the ants ate less last week because the weather was too hot where I live,

and they went into estivation—a sort of hibernation mode for tropical ants when temperatures get too high.

But today it had rained, which cooled the temperatures of my ant room down considerably,

thereby awakening the ants and bringing back their appetite.

Good to know for future reference!

And wow, look!

Even the Majors have emerged to come help with bringing in the food.

This was honestly so good to see because I had grown worried that the Leviathans were going off feed,

but nope.

This was their typical swarm and their way of blessing the food offerings we gave them.

I suspected that all this nutrition would also give the ants the energy they needed

to start the great emigration into their new M-ant-sion!

It was only a matter of time now before the ants decided to move in

and take their place in a larger, cleaner, and more luxurious ant home.

My heart was full watching our Leviathans feed cum gusto on their mealworm pupae,

who were now set free from the bounds of life by the dozens of ant stings from the hungry ants.

But what ended up happening after this feeding threw me off

and was not what I expected in the least.

The ants had their own plans.

The next day, I was surprised to see this.

No activity!

Okay, one ant.

But where did everybody go?

Okay, this was totally not what I expected at all.

I expected the ants would have moved in by now.

Or did they move in?

Opening the nest

Hmmm…

I opened the nest to see what was going on inside.

Okay, they’re here.

The first thing I spotted was a major.

Huge!

Not quite a supermajor but still huge.

I also admired the curtains of brood that stuck beautifully onto the smooth surface of the glass.

I wondered how the brood could do that.

Did they have a partially adhesive skin?

There was a mealworm pupa dragged in for consumption,

and finally the last thing I noticed was that somehow the soils looked different—better—and the ants more at ease.

Initially, I thought the ants looked distressed from poor conditions within their test tube,

but for some reason, looking at the ants now, they somehow seemed alright.

Tell me if you notice it too,

but the areas of coco fiber that used to look completely dry were now somehow moist again.

What?

Then I noticed the ants had transported a huge dry chunk,

which used to be at the top of their test tube,

down to what used to be the wet mucky area at the bottom.

The Titanic Empress appeared with all her minions around her.

And then, suddenly something came to me that blew me away.

Hold on a sec!

The ants at the water test tube!

Nooo…

Could it be possible that the ants were drinking this water,

then bringing it to the nest and regurgitating it up to moisten the dry areas of the nest?

Can ants even do that?

Technically they could—but wow—if this was the case,

this was the very first time I’d ever heard of ants doing such a thing.

All along, these ants were in total control of their nest conditions,

and as I usually do,

I guess I had unnecessarily freaked out thinking they weren’t.

Haha!

After thinking about it for a bit,

not moving into the M-ant-sion and staying in an environment they were familiar with,

knew was safe,

and could modify and customize accordingly was indeed also a good strategy.

They can’t just trust a new space will be a suitable home right off the bat,

although I do know some ant species like fire ants would.

A random alien space,

which technically the M-ant-sion was,

as it was more of an alien spaceship that appeared out of nowhere,

could turn out to be a very dangerous or unstable home.

And it did seem the collective ant intelligence of the Leviathans deemed the M-ant-sion I gave them

unsuitable to move into right now—for reasons unknown.

Was it too wet? Too dry? Smelled funny? Wrong pH level? Too big?

I had no idea.

But one thing was clear:

The ants actually preferred to stay home, despite its small size.

And I was okay with that.

The ants, even after Day 10, still did not move into the M-ant-sion.

And I’m certainly glad I didn’t force them out through light,

if staying home was what they truly wanted.

All of this was a good reminder that as an ant keeper,

there is a point where I need to trust in the intelligence of the ants to adapt and survive.

The most I can do for them is provide them the resources, food, and space I think they need to survive.

But in the end, the final say would always be the ants,

and not what I feel the ants should do.

Ant keeping, after all, was a mutual partnership between humans and ants.

And in this case,

I guess I was reading them wrong all this time.

Their rejection of the M-ant-sion was their way of telling me loud and clear:

“Bruh, we love our little ant shack, so don’t worry so much!

We got this!

Just build our terrarium, please.”

Haha!

Okay, noted Leviathans. Noted.

I guess in life, bigger doesn’t always necessarily mean better,

and sometimes, there really is no place like home—even for ants.

I’ve already begun working on their new terrarium,

which I will debut very soon.

So guys, if you haven’t yet,

do hit that SUBSCRIBE button

so you can continue to follow this epic life story of our Leviathans,

who will soon move into their new forever home.

But meanwhile, I’ll keep this M-ant-sion in Marauder’s Alley in case they change their mind and want to move into it.

And if you enjoyed this video,

please remember to hit the LIKE button,

as it really helps a lot to let YouTube know you enjoy these ant videos

and that they’re worth sharing to new audiences.

Thank you all for allowing these ants into your hearts.

I’m excited to discover with all of you what’s next

in this ever-unfolding, twisting, and winding Leviathan story.

Outro

But secretly, within the shadowy outskirts of Marauder’s Alley,

lay a very dangerous force that was silently amassing their numbers.

Rivals to our Leviathans,

the Crimson Queen and her growing army of fire ants,

named the Crimson Knights,

watched from afar,

promising to themselves that one day,

their kingdom would overthrow that of the Leviathans,

who seemed to be taking over the channel

and winning over love from AC Family everywhere.

“Not over my dead body,” the Crimson Queen uttered.

“For three generations, fire ants have always ruled the Antiverse.”

The workers had just finished off a roach on their feeding grounds,

and were about to explode in numbers,

determined to catch up to the Leviathan army.

“The Leviathans,” the Crimson Queen vowed,

“…shall see their ultimate doom at the stingers of the Crimson Knights.

Haha!”

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It’s ant love forever!