I'm left with no choice. I have to kill them. All the survivors within this terrarium, called
the Hacienda Del Dorado, need to be extinguished! AC Family, it was time for Phase 3: Project
Cloverfield. The release of an Angel of Death, to completely
kill all surviving ants within the Hacienda Del Dorado, before the mites decide to spread
to our other ant kingdoms. Excuse me, fruit fly milennials. I'll be needing some of this, to prepare for
the arrival of our new Angel of Death, which lays inside here. Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel, and hit the
BELL icon. Welcome to the AC Family! Enjoy! It's night time in the Hacienda Del Dorado,
Night 1 of Project Cloverfield, the first night that our newly introduced Angel of Death
was going to spend, within these territories, in our Antiverse. Now, if you've been following this channel
for awhile, you may notice that the Hacienda Del Doradan terrain looks different from normal,
and I'll be getting into why that is, in a bit. But look, a movement now, up in the wooden
bridges above. You could almost miss her if you don't look
carefully. She stares at us from the shadows with her
piercing reptilian eyes. AC Family, behold, a house gecko, of the genus
Hemidactylus, just a juvenile, but wary of our presence in her feeding grounds. Her cryptic colouration makes her camouflage
perfectly into the surroundings, as she hugs onto the driftwood, laying as flat and discreet
as possible. But the thing that trips me out the most are
those eyes! Check out those vertical slits for pupils,
which make her look almost serpentine and netherworldly. Staring at her was like staring at a small
goblin-like demon. Obviously, not a demon, just a cute little
gecko coming out for its nightly ritual to feed. But for those of you who are anticipating
for the reveal from last week's video, you may surprised to know that this little house
gecko is not only not a demon, but it is also not our Angel of Death sent in these lands
to exterminate our remaining population of mite-infected ants. In fact, I didn't even know there was a gecko
in here to begin with! You see I live in tropical Manila, Philippines
where house geckoes are common in homes, kind of like house spiders in North America. They feed on little flying insects that manage
to sneak into the home, so I welcome them to live with me. This little one probably saw the current state
of the Hacienda Del Dorado as the perfect opportunity to move in, seeing as the population
of the Golden Empire, the supercolony of yellow crazy ants that used to rule these lands,
had been greatly reduced by their parasitic mite plague. When the Golden Empire was healthy and filled
these territories, the gecko would have been eaten alive, but now, with just a few weakened
and mite-infested ants, this gecko was living the high life eating flying insects and quite
possibly even our ants! You'll find out more about how this gecko
actually helps us later on in the video. But meanwhile, let's get to what everyone's
been waiting for, the revelation of our Angel of Death, and find out why the Hacienda Del
Dorado had to undergo, yet another renovation, namely this pond. AC Family, what's coming up will truly leave
you flabbergasted, as it did me! And trust me, you won't want to miss, Phase
B of Project Cloverfield, the deployment and introduction of more creatures, coming up. So, last week, within this receptacle awaited
our quote unquote "Angel of Death" to be released, a creature that, as mentioned, I needed to
help kill off all remaining Golden Empire. Now if you're new here, and are wondering
what all this is about, real quick: the Golden Empire, one of the O.G. and beloved ant supercolonies
of this channel, which used to number in the millions, have been greatly reduced in population
by an unexpected, mass parasitic mite outbreak. Luckily, one of you AC Family commented in
a previous video featuring our rhino beetles, of all videos, identified that the mites seen
on their bodies were predatory Hypoaspis mites, that are known to eat bad parasitic mites
wanting to suck on beetle blood. This brilliant comment gave me the idea to
attempt using these Hypoaspis mites, to cure our mite-plagued Golden Empire from their
parasitic mites. So after a careful experiment, we were shocked
to discover that indeed, the Hypoaspis mites ate the parasitic mites on our ants. So in last week's episode, I quarantined as
much of the remaining Golden Empire ants as I could collect from the Hacienda Del Dorado,
and exposed them to a team of Hypoaspis mites harvested from our rhino beetles, in a final
operation to save our Golden Empire. We even quarantined a mite-free queen, along
with a mite-free entourage from our experiment, to have safely put away, just in case, our
worst fears became reality, and our quarantined colony ended up losing their battle to the
mites. At least we had a mite-free queen and workers
to restart the Golden Empire from scratch. But, I think you'll be happy to see the results
of Project Quarantine coming up later in this video, so do hang tight for that. But, as for the remaining ants still living
in the Hacienda Del Dorado that I missed, sadly I realized that I needed to exterminate
them, because I was afraid that had I just allowed these infected Golden Empire ants
to die out naturally, the mites, having no more food left, might crawl out of the Hacienda
Del Dorado and go on to infect all my other ant kingdoms in the ant room, which would
be a disaster, and wouldn't take the mites long at all to execute. All ant keepers know that once an ant colony
contracts parasitic mites, they're pretty much dead in no time, as we've seen so far
with the Golden Empire. So, here we are, AC Family, the Angel of Death,
its purpose: to kill all ants and the mites parasitizing them. I gave you guys a chance to guess its identity
in last week's hidden video, through a riddle. A lot of you guys had some great guesses,
and some guesses were ummm... quite odd to say the least. But, if you missed it, here was the riddle: Below the stars, this creature hunts,
Under the moon, it moves and grunts, Feeding on dog food for brunch,
Or swimming in water during its wet months, Nasty toxins come from this bunch,
I always wash my hands at once, Don't touch your eyes nor touch your tongues,
A beast that loves to snack and much, Eating the ants with mites for lunch. After several minutes, out of nowhere, our
Angel of Death peeked its bumpy head out. And then it clumsily plopped itself out of
its transport container, and onto Hacienda Del Doradan soil. AC Family, our Angel of Death, is a toad. A juvenile cane toad to be exact, most likely
a female, though they're a bit harder to sex at this age. Let's go over the riddle as we watch her snoop
around her new home! "Below the stars, this creature hunts,
Under the moon, it moves and grunts" These lines refer to these cane toads being
nocturnal by nature. They emerge in the night to eat insects and
small creatures. Males also make toad noises, either for mate-calling
or informing other males to avoid mating confusion. "Feeding on dog food for brunch" refers to
the fact that these cane toads are known to actually eat dog food. "Or swimming in water during its wet months"
refers to the fact that these toads are amphibians, with a fully aquatic life stage, where they
emerge from their eggs as tadpoles. "Nasty toxins come from this bunch,
I always wash my hands at once, Don't touch your eyes nor touch your tongues"
refers to the fact that toads posses special organs at the sides of their heads called
parotid glads which when squeezed can release a milky-white fluid known as bufotoxin which
is poisonous to many animals. Human deaths have actually been recorded from
eating cane toads. As a kid, I made the mistake of rubbing my
eyes, after touching American toads, and believe me it wasn't pleasant! And finally "A beast that loves to snack and
much, eating the ants with mites for lunch" refers to my deployment of this young cane
toad to be the creature to eat all the remaining Golden Empire ants in the Hacienda Del Dorado. Many of you guessed correctly by answering
"cane toad", but even "toad" was correct. For the many of you that said "frog", you
were partially correct because indeed toads are a type of frog, but not all frogs are
considered toads. Finally, in case you were second guessing
yourself, I designed this entire riddle to be an acrostic poem, where the first letters
of each line spelled "Bufonidae", which happens to be the taxonomic family of true toads. Congrats to all who guessed it right. So my plan was to supplement this toad's diet
with roaches and worms, and have it snack on our Golden Empire ants as it came across
them. Now I've owned cane toads before, and these
toads have very voracious appetites and at this size have been known to eat ants! So, I was confident our Angel of Death would
do an excellent job and picking off all remaining Golden Empire, but as I watched her disappear
over a hill, little did I know, she was going to surprise us with some alternate plans. But now that we had a toad living in the Hacienda
Del Dorado, we needed to make some alterations to the terrain. We needed to make these lands, toad country,
and to do that, we needed to add a pond. I began to scrape at the earth to make room
for a new body of water. Unlike most frogs, toads actually have the
advantage of not needing tonnes of water 24-7. Toads simply need to soak themselves periodically
but spend most of their time on land, so this body of water needed not be too deep. I used this naturalistic water holder to form
our new pond. Once in place, I added some bottled purified
water. I just couldn't wait to watch our new toad
visiting this pond we made for it to soak itself up as needed. It's part of the joys of caring for toads,
watching them hydroregulate on both land and water. So all was set. The Hacienda Del Dorado, now had a totally
new look. It had transformed into tropical bogland habitat,
perfect for our toad to enjoy and do its awesome work at eating our ants. What do you guys think of the Hacienda Del
Dorado's new look? I also made sure to moisten the surrounding
area for added toad comfort. I really wanted for our toad to feel at home
here. Now although it didn't seem the toad wanted
to show herself at the present time, I knew later in the night, she'd emerge to feed,
and when she did, I was going to be ready to film her eating ants! It's night time in the Hacienda Del Dorado,
Night 1 of Project Cloverfield, the first night that our newly introduced Angel of Death
was going to spend, within these territories, in our Antiverse. Mite-infected Golden Empire ants were wandering
the premise. And look, stretching long aside our new pond,
emerged some young earthworms seeking new grounds. They scaled the moss and rocks in hopes to
find new places in which to form new burrows. These normally subterranean creatures have
emerged above ground as a response to rain. It seems wetting the lands earlier this evening
had filled the burrows of the local earthworms with water, causing them to come out and seek
drier soils. Earthworms, though kinda gross, are essential
to the ecosystems they are part of, as they are great at fertilizing plants, aerating
soils, and breaking down decaying matter. With the Hacienda Del Dorado being a 100%
bioactive terrarium, these earthworms are super important in these lands. AC Family, look at how they move by using
sections of their body to act as an anchor while the rest contracts, as it squirms forward. They can do this to move both forward and
backward. Earthworms don't have eyes, but their skin
is photosensitive so they can sense light and shadows. This helps them avoid predators, but I knew
that all this worm squirming was the perfect lure to attract our Angel of Death out of
hiding to start feeding. But you know what, AC Family? I waited and waited. In fact, after several cups of coffee, I waited
all night until sunrise, and there was no sign of our Angel of Death. Hmm... What was going on here? No toad, and a whole sleepless night gone
by. The next morning, I scanned the lands in hopes
to find the toad perhaps hopping around or soaking in our pond. But to my dismay, she was nowhere to be found. Hmmm... I spotted members of the Golden Empire wandering
the grounds. Mites were clearly, and quite literally, draining
the life out of them. But the thing was, as weird as it is for me
to say this because I love these ants, we really needed them all eaten asap, to make
sure Project Cloverfield was successful, so we wouldn't have to worry about mites crawling
out of the terrarium to infect my other ants and critters, nor would we have to worry if
we ever decided to repopulate the Hacienda Del Dorado with ants again, more about that
later. But we truly depended on this cane toad, wherever
it was in here, to get going and start ant-eating! Night 2 of Project Cloverfield. The Hacienda Del Dorado was still, and I was
determined to film our Angel of Death emerging and eating. Scanning the premises, it seemed our toad
was still nowhere to be seen, but I was camped out and prepared to endure another long, sleepless
night. To help the time pass while waiting for our
toad to emerge, I enjoyed watching our rhino beetles, also nocturnal, coming out to feed,
and speaking of which guys, for those of you following their story and anticipating the
2019 Rhino Beetle Games, I've got some pretty exciting news, particularly for you Team Hephaestus! Your champion, Team Hephaestus has officially
arrived. Here he is gorging on his banana. I've got all emerged beetles stacked side-by-side,
and have weights holding their covers down as they are super strong and have grown capable
of lifting their lids open! Talk about strength! I can't wait for the Rhino Beetle Games to
finally start, once the final male rhino beetle, Hades, has fully hardened and has charged
up, ready to go. I bet this will happen in a week or so, and
when it does, may the Rhino Beetle Games begin! Who out there is as excited as I am? What team are you guys?! Sound off in the comments section, and cheer
on your champion Gladiator, for a chance at winning a prize at the end of the games. But waiting seems to be all we've been doing
lately, and will you believe, once again all night, our toad refused to emerge. What was going on here? Night 3 of Project Cloverfield, and still
no sign of our Angel of Death. Where could this toad be? Seriously, I mean it wasn't coming out to
eat and I was certain it hadn't come out to soak either seeing as I saw no splash marks
on the glass. We needed to lure it out somehow. And so I came up with a plan! For sure this toad was probably dry and needed
to come out to soak itself soon, but perhaps it didn't know there was even a fresh pond
here waiting to hydrate its dry bumpy skin! So, I looked up a Youtube video and found
an 11 hour audio video of a peaceful river and played that gently below the terrarium. My hopes were that the sounds would entice
our dehydrated toad to come out of hiding, to have a soak and then eat some ants already! And AC Family, what it did do was entice our
baby gecko to emerge, who curiously checked out where the sounds of running water was
coming from. "I don't remember there being a river here!"
it thought to itself. After nearly 3 hours of waiting and still
no sign of the toad, I figured that maybe our spotlight was perhaps scaring it. After all, these cane toads were dark-loving
creatures, so I reduced the light to further cloak the lands in darkness. For sure the toad was going to come out now! No bright lights to fear, beloved Angel of
Death. Please come out for us tonight! It was getting critical, with every passing
night, waiting for this toad to do its thing. We needed the toad to eat all these ants carrying
mites, and with every passing day, more of these ants were dying, which meant more hungry
mites looking for new hosts. If this continued, our other ants and critters
in the Ant Room were in immediate danger. Now I'm sure a lot of you were wondering the
same thing I was wondering, and that was if our resident house gecko was actually eating
the ants. If this was the case, we actually didn't need
a toad, and this gecko would have become the new Angel of Death to wipe out our Golden
Empire. So I made sure to watch the gecko as well,
and check this out, AC Family! I was surprised to discover, that it actually
had no interest in our ants of the Golden Empire, but it did relish any flying queen
alates of other ant species that were dropping in to check out the currently unoccupied territories
in hopes to start a nest! I watched it actively hunt down and eat black
crazy ant queens dropping in to house shop! I had no idea other ants from the outside
were even visiting the Hacienda Del Dorado. Amazing to see how much actually happens in
the night that we day-beings miss! Turns out the presence of our gecko was actually
beneficial to the Golden Empire, acting as a guardian to outside ant queens, wanting
to steal these fertile lands from its original owners. This gecko and our ants had in a way established
a mutually symbiotic relationship, a biological partnership. But speaking of biological partnerships, it
seems ours with our Angel of Death was not quite working out. Over the next few hours, I stayed up only
to a motionless terrarium, no toad coming out to feed nor soak, and all to the droning
and soon annoying sound of running stream water. On Night 4, I tried a couple things. I figured maybe it needed a rain shower to
encourage its emergence. After all many insects and amphibians emerge
after it rains here in the Philippines. This did not work. No toad. I tried luring the toad out with a superworm. Surely no toad could resist the tantalizing
squirming of a live superworm, right? Nope, no toad in sight. OK, what was going on here?! I have a lot of patience, but this toad was
truly holding off on us. In a final act of desperation, I even tried
my best to sing the toad out, probably an idea that came out of delirious lack of sleep. I remember nodding off to sleep on the Ant
Room floor, singing some Mariah Carey, some time before sunrise (I'm thinking of you in
my sleepless solitude tonight). I gave my all, and nothing was working! I had to rip myself away from this toad for
moment. Let's take a look at our recuperating quarantined
Golden Empire. How were they doing now that a team of Hypoaspis
mites had infiltrated their mite-infested colony? AC Family, I think you'll be as shocked as
I was to see what I saw. Have a look! Are you guys seeing what I'm seeing? Ants with little to no mites, or actually,
I don't think I could see any mites at all! It had been about a week of exposure to the
Hypoaspis mites. I don't actually know where the Hypoaspis
mites were, as they were no longer visible in the honey-water tube through which they
were introduced to the quarantine setup. I dunno, do you guys see any Hypoaspis mites
or parasitic mites on our ants? My guess was that the Hypoaspis mites were
perhaps somewhere frequenting the ants' burrows within this AC Outworld in which they were
setting up shop for now picking off the parasitic mites they came across. When I saw this, my heart leaped in my chest! AC Family, I think our plan worked! It seems that within a week, the colony was
parasitic mite-free, or at least it seemed the majority of them were. I resolved to keep an close eye on this quarantined
colony and monitor them over the next couple of weeks or so before we conclude for sure
that they've battled the mites. If so, I think we could go ahead and reunite
our insurance queen and her entourage safely back to the colony. What a relief, AC Family. I feel our Golden Empire is well on the road
to recovery and if all goes well will one day regenerate back into the supercolony they
once were. But now we had to get serious about ensuring
the success of Project Cloverfield. Behold, within this AC Ant Tower, I had three
superworms, which were to act as bait. My plan was to fixate this Ant Tower inside
the Hacienda Del Dorado and hopefully entice the toad to come out! If this plan wasn't going to work tonight,
I was drawing up some plans for a Phase B for Project Cloverfield, which I think you
guys might find super neat! Night 5 of Project Cloverfield. Not a toad in sight. I could feel that by this 5th night our toad
was hungry and eager to eat. I was prepared to catch it emerging at any
moment, and AC Family, you won't believe what happened on Night 5. Nothing. Literally nothing. No toad. This was the final straw. I had to go in and find our Angel of Death,
who at this point I wanted to nickname Angel of No Show! I began to feel around the setup to try to
get it to jump out of hiding. By this day, I was greatly underslept, now
catching a bad cold due to staying up late all these nights, which would explain why
you may have noticed that it sounds like I have a frog in my throat for this video, pun
intended, but most of all I was acting out of fear that the mites which were eliminating
every ant in here one by one, and were making plans now to migrate to my other ant colonies
and critter setups, and I couldn't let this happen! Phase B of Project Cloverfield was now in
full effect! When I couldn't get the toad to jump out into
sight, I proceeded to remove the driftwood to get a better look, and that was when I
saw it! There it is! There you are. Our Angel of Death jumped into sight! Come here on little guy. Where have you been? AC Family, behold! Our elusive Angel of Death. I have no idea why our toad didn't emerge
to feed. Do any of you guys have any ideas? Unless she was feeding quietly in the shadows
somewhere. Anyway first thing's first, I moistened the
toad with some fresh water. Second, I dropped in a superworm, which she
totally ignored. I also stuck in a few roaches which were also
ignored. I've had cane toads in the past, and this
was not typical cane toad appetite, so perhaps she was just frightened. After a vet visit, I'll have to rehome our
Angel of Death to a loving home. I decided not to replace the driftwood I removed
on this end. Why? Well, AC Family, we'll be needing a bit more
room for the completion of Project Cloverfield Phase B. So, AC Family, are you ready for
this? We really needed to exterminate these remaining
ants carrying the parasitic mites, and so after careful searching, I found the perfect
agents to do the job that our Angel of Death failed to do. Perhaps I was a little ambitious trying to
deploy an Angel of Death to wipe our Hacienda Del Dorado clean of ants. But this time, guys, I was going to try something
smaller, some Death Sprites. AC Family behold, our new Death Sprites to
carry out the completion of Project Cloverfield! It's night time in the Hacienda Del Dorado,
Night 1 of Phase B of Project Cloverfield, the first night that our newly introduced
Death Sprites were going to spend, within these territories, in our Antiverse. And look, it's our house gecko making an appearance
to check out the lowlands. But what is it doing down here? Let's see. It seems to be looking for something. Quietly it smells the area with its tongue
like a serpent, and moves across the floor honing in something that has caught its attention. Ahh here it is. A pile of rotting banana, placed here from
the Bowl of Life to attract fruit flies and ants to the area. She licks the sweet and fermented banana cum
gusto. Scrumptious and delectable! But then a rustling of leaves caught my eye. Look here! There beneath the dead leaves, waits in the
darkness, one of our several Death Sprites, a painted toad. Also called narrowmouth toads, these microhylid
toads are endemic to where I live, emerging to hunt at night. She's such a beautiful death sprite, isn't
she, hiding steathily in darkness? But the big question was: did she have a taste
for ants? So much relied on whether or not these tiny
painted toads would eat our ants, and I was determined to find out. I waited and watched. Yes! Yes! Thanosed! Alright, AC Family! It's too bad our cane toad wasn't a mainstay
on the channel, but these new painted toads were literally added last night, and as you
saw, we have proof that they've been feeding on the Golden Empire. What should we name our new group of painted
toad Death Sprites? Let me know in the comments! I'll continue filming these cuties through
the week and document their activity closely, to see if they will go on to successfully
eat all our ants within the Hacienda Del Dorado. It's great to know that the Golden Empire
looks like they're well on their way to recovery, as well! So guys, be sure to smash that subscribe button
and bell icon now, so you get notified at every single upload and find out in next week's
episode how our new Death Fairies prove to be at cleaning up the Hacienda Del Dorado
for our new generation of Golden Empire, and hit the like button every single time, including
now. Plus, the Rhino Beetle Games are fast approaching,
guys, and you won't want to miss that! The games may come sooner than you think! If you're new to the channel, and want to
catch up on all your AntsCanada Lore, feel free to binge watch this complete story line
playlist here, which traces the origins of all the ant colonies of the ant room, so you
can follow their stories and better appreciate how these ant kingdoms came to be, and why
we love them so much! AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie
for you here, if you would like to watch some extended play footage of our new painted toads
within the Hacienda Del Dorado. Get a sneak peek into next week's episode
and get a closer look at these incredible amphibians. They belong to the genus Kaloula and are endemic
to the Philippines, so chances are you may not have seen them before. Check them out! And now it's time for the AC Question of the
Week! Last week we asked: Why couldn't we just let the remaining ants
within the Hacienda Del Dorado die out? Congratulations to MasterDhen who correctly
answered: The mites might spread and might
affect other ants in the Ant Room. Congratulations, MasterDhen, you just won
a free e-book handbook from our shop! In this week's AC Question of the Week, we
ask: What is the name of the
toxin produced by toads? Leave your answer in the comments section
and you could also win a free e-book handbook from 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!
