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This video is about ant endoparasites. We look at Zombie ants resulting from the Cordyceps fungus, parasitic flies, and gruesome nematodes that parasitize ants. Caution: Do not eat while watching this video!

Zombie Ants, Killer Flies, Alien Worms | Ant Endoparasites

Sup guys! Welcome to the AntsCanada ant channel. I am watching my really awesome and just fascinating colony of Paratrechina longicornis. They are a tropical species also known as black crazy ants. Now, just a throwback—if you guys think about the series Aliens starring Sigourney Weaver, that whole series, you might notice that they have a lot of similarities to these eusocial insects like ants and wasps. For one thing, the aliens live in colonies composed of, well, the aliens, which were like workers and a queen who would lay the eggs and give rise to the rest of the alien creatures. The creator of the Alien series actually admitted that he was inspired by the lives of bees, wasps, ants, and termites, which I think is pretty cool.

Now, a particular interest in this video is the chest busters. You know, the queen would lay an egg, and that egg would hatch into this larval creature, and it would end up in a human and kind of incubate there and feed on the person’s innards, and then eventually burst out of the human’s chest where it would continue to live its life and grow into an adult alien. Now, thank God we humans don’t have to deal with that, and that’s just fiction. But ants actually do have to deal with those chest busters in the ant world. They have to deal with all sorts of creepy and gross endoparasites.

Now, while creating this video, guys, I admit I was completely disgusted because I’m what they call a “helminthophobic,” which is an irrational fear of worms, and I am just disgusted and terrified by worms. I have always been disgusted and terrified by worms. I think it happened when I was a child and I watched my puppy vomit tapeworms. I think that’s where it started. But fishing and all of that really grosses me out; worms and maggots really gross me out, so creating this video was nasty, but it was also very, very interesting.

And so, for this week’s video of the AntsCanada ant channel, I wanted to talk about ant endoparasites, presenting an endoparasite, Exhibit A: nematodes, also known as roundworms. The total number of nematode species has been estimated to be about 1 million, and over half of the ones that we’ve discovered so far are known to be parasitic. This photo was provided to us by Andrew Smith from formiculture.com. He managed to take a picture of a worker with a nematode breaking free from this ant’s gaster. How did it get there, you ask? Well, let’s look at the life cycle of this nematode species.

This photo from scienceblogs.com by Brian Switek shows the interesting life cycle of one such nematode species. Now, what you see here are Cephalotes ants, also known as turtle ants. Now, the turtle ant to the left is a healthy worker ant, but the turtle ant to the right is an infected turtle ant, infected by a Tetradonematidae nematode species. The first thing you might notice is its bright red gaster. This physiological change was brought about by being infected by this species of nematode, and it just so happens that this bright red gaster closely resembles berries.

Now check this out, guys. So now that the infected worker is full of nematodes and is basically about to die, it just sits there unable to move, and then along comes a bird, sees its bright red gaster, and eats it, thinking it’s a berry. So within the bird, the nematodes break free, further develop, breed, and lay eggs. These eggs eventually get cast off into the bird’s droppings, which then gets picked up by ants and is fed to larvae. Within the larvae, the eggs hatch and reside in the ant all the way until adulthood. The nematodes develop by the time the ant is an adult, and the cycle begins all over again. The nematode breaking free from the gaster in this picture was probably ingested by the ant at the larval stage.

Exhibit B: This video sent in by Dary Jaden shows a queen Camponotus ant, and her gaster is completely swollen as if she’s filled with gas, ready to lay eggs. But inside that gaster are not eggs. What could they be? You can see them slither and move around just beneath the membrane. Can you guess what they are? Have a look—maggots! Parasitic maggots, that is.

How these parasitic maggots got here? There are a few possibilities. They could have been ingested by the queen as she was growing, like in the nematodes, or the adult fly, the parent of these maggots, could have managed to lay her eggs on the queen ant while she was out flying during her nuptial flight. Many parasitic flies need only a split second to lay a batch of eggs onto the exoskeleton of an ant. The eggs hatch, and the tiny maggots burrow into the queen, where they feed on her insides and develop into these large maggots, which then emerge and pupate, forming cocoons. From these cocoons emerge adult parasitic flies.

The parasitic flies mate, the pregnant flies lay their batch of eggs once again on a queen ant, and the cycle starts all over again. You might recall a video we did on a parasitic fly where it emerged from a queen Lasius ant. Be sure to check out that video! We also know of other flies that parasitize ants, including a species of phorid flies that infect fire ants and decapitate them when they emerge from the ant’s body. There are probably hundreds of parasitic flies out there that are ant parasites. Good luck eating your lunch, guys! Gross.

Exhibit C: Now in this photo by N. Valerie taken from Bagua.org, you’ll see a deceased ant with weird growths coming out of its exoskeleton. If you haven’t heard about them yet, this is the ever-famous cordyceps fungus. Now, the way the cordyceps fungus works is the spores end up on the exoskeleton of the ant. From these spores, the fungus eventually burrows into the body of the ant and makes its way to the brain. Once at the brain, this fungus controls the ant’s behavior, turning them into zombies. These newly zombified ants can’t do anything but move around, and the fungus controls the ant, making it want to travel upwards. The ant ends up crawling up a plant or a branch, and once at the perfect location, the fungus causes the ant to bite down and anchor itself, and soon from the ant’s head, the fungus’s mushroom grows right out.

It’s right out of a science fiction novel! Once fully grown, the mushroom releases spores, which continue the life cycle of the cordyceps fungus. Can you believe ants have to deal with zombification? Thank God we’re not ants! And believe it or not, the cordyceps fungus is a collection of many, many different species, and each species specializes on a specific species of ant, other insect, or other arthropod. Check out this cordyceps fungus that erupted from this wasp. Thank God I’m not an ant!

There you have it, guys. Thank you so much for watching our video. If you like what you saw, be sure to subscribe because I upload a video every first and third Monday of the month. Maybe not so much on worms and maggots, but if you visit our website, antscanada.com, we’ve got tons and tons of great info there about keeping ants as pets and a lot of ant-keeping products too. If you would like an entire setup for keeping ants professionally, we also sell ads in key cities, so check out our website.

Thanks, guys, so much for watching our video! Take care, and ant love forever! Thanks so much for watching our video; it really means a lot to me. Again, subscribe to our channel; we upload a new video every first and third Monday of the month. And don’t forget to check out our very helpful tutorial playlist. It’s got tons of very easy-to-understand tutorials on ant keeping, and don’t forget to also check out our Solenopsis jam playlist. Thanks, guys! It’s ant love forever!