OMG! Weaver Ants are literal savages! Today we take an exploratory peek into the
lives of ants that live in my yard, that I’ve discovered to be the top ants of the ecosystem
of my area. They hunt, kill, and take home to their incredible
leaf basket nests in the trees, a tonne of different insects and random edibles, to eat
and thereby grow their massive ant colonies even larger. Today we’re going to be seeing all the crazy
and different things, the weaver ants manage to catch and kill in my yard! But perhaps the most shocking kills, I managed
to spot them taking home to feast on, are members of one of the most dreaded insect
armies of my entire yard - fire ants! Welcome everyone to the Great Antopian War,
here on the AntsCanada Ant Channel. Please SUBSCRIBE to the channel, and hit the
BELL ICON. Welcome to the AC Family! Enjoy! Welcome everyone to Antopia, the name given
to our almost 3,000 square meter plot of tropical land on which we are building the great Ant
House, a home for all our future ant colonies and beasts on this channel. But today, I wanted to focus mainly on one
ant colony, or species of ants rather, that exists in my yard that I’ve come to learn
is on top of the food chain as far as insects go. I’ll be showing you the items on their preferred
menu, some of which will shock you, things I’ve been feeding them to support them,
their world famous leaf nests which give them their name, and of course the thing I’m
sure all of you are here to witness the weaver ants tearing into the invasive fire ant colonies
of my yard. All that and more is coming up. But before we get into the savagery that is
weaver ant life, let’s first get into why I love that the Weaver Ants are killing and
eating the fire ants. If you’ve been following the channel, you
already know that we’ve recently discovered that Antopia here is the site of a huge epic,
natural battle of wild ant colonies. Various armies of different ant species are
scattered throughout the territories, all attempting to claim victory over the land. Some of the ant colonies have created peaceful
truces with other ant colonies, but most of them are in war mode with each other! Now, over the past several weeks, I’ve been
busy, carefully mapping out all the ant colonies and ant nests I spot in the yard, and I have
found there to essentially be two major teams of ants at war: Team Native Ants, i.e. the
ants who have lived in Antopia for millions of years and are endemic to the area, and
Team Invasive Ants, i.e. the ant newcomers who’ve been introduced to these lands by
way of human activities, and seek to outcompete, displace, and/or kill the Native Ants. Now the reason I love that the Weaver Ants
are killing the Fire Ants in my yard is because weaver ants are from Team Natives, while fire
ants belong to Team Invasives. Invasive species can totally destroy the delicate
balance of an ecosystem, and we’ve already seen how fire ants have been killing and devouring
local wildlife. What’s even scarier is right now happens
to be the season new fire ant colonies emerge from their underground month-long claustral
chambers, the first generation of fire ants born from queens which had their mating nuptial
flights late last year. The fire ant colonies of Antopia are proliferating
and happen to be the most powerful and fearsome ant armies of Team Invasives, so needless
to say, I was happy and grateful to know that Antopia, likewise had an equally powerful
force belonging to Team Natives, who had what it took to drive out or even eradicate these
fire ant invaders. The Weaver Ants! So, let’s now take a moment to meet these
savage weaver ant warriors of Team Native Ants, shall we? You guys will truly love the weaver ants of
Antopia, and AC Family while watching them, help me think of an official name for them
and leave your suggestions in the comments! Asian Weaver Ants, also known as Oecophylla
smaragdina, get their name from their nests. Here is one of the many weaver ant nests in
the area. Unlike most regular ants that build their
nests in the ground, weaver ants construct their nests up in trees or in bushes, as you
can see here in this pomelo tree. Every tree and bush in Antopia is home to
at least one of these weaver ant hanging basket nests. They’re marvelous constructions. Check them out, guys! So weaver ant nests are essentially the leaves
of the tree or shrub, which are all pulled in and glued together using the silk produced
by their larvae. It’s truly an amazing process and we’ve
seen weaver ants build these leaf nests back when we had a colony of weaver ants, known
as the Emerald Empire. If you haven’t watched the Emerald Empire
series, be sure to watch their story here, after watching this video! Sadly, I had to release them back into the
wild last year due to lockdown making it hard to meet their very demanding needs in a captive
setup. So the brilliance of these leaf nests is that
once the silk walls that stick the leaves of the weaver ant nests together solidify,
these leaf basket nests become weatherproof, being able to withstand typhoons, as well
as the scorching heat of the sun. The leaves remain alive for a few weeks once
incorporated into these leaf basket nests so they are still constantly absorbing carbon
dioxide produced by the ants, and releasing fresh invigorating oxygen through photosynthesis,
as well as humidity through transpiration. Each basket nest maintains the perfect conditions
for the colony’s brood, the workers, and their multiple queens. As we’ve seen with the Emerald Empire, the
queens which are absolutely massive ants can come in a variety of colours, ranging from
yellowish to brown, to lime green, to even blue-green! They are truly some of the most gorgeous ants
I’ve ever seen and owned! The weaver ant colonies get absolutely massive
which of course means they eat a lot! So now, AC Family, here’s where you get
to see all the random and crazy things I watched one of the weaver ant colonies in Antopia
take home to their nests to feast on. So I sat and watched an active swarm of weaver
ants located here on the Antopian map to document everything the ants took up to their nests
in the acacia tree. Check out all the interesting things they
captured and took home to eat! First, check out this black cricket they seized
and killed. It seems they’ve managed to dismember it,
pulling off several of its legs, but I did see the cricket still slightly breathing. This young cricket was still alive, as the
weaver ants carried it up their tree. Weaver ants don’t have stingers, but they
do have formic acid, which they spray at their enemies or prey, and this is enough to kill
or at least immobilize most insects caught within their clutches. Another way which weaver ants subdue their
prey is by grabbing it from all ends and appendages and stretching their prey to death. There is just no way a prey insect would be
able to wriggle free from a team of weaver ants grabbing it from all sides, transporting
it to the nest. I mean we’re talking mandibles and legs
strong enough to pull giant leaves of a tree together and hold them in unnatural positions
for hours until the larval silk is strung between them. Weaver ants are undoubtedly some of the strongest
ants in the entire world! Also, I spotted the weaver ants carrying this
dead cockroach. This roach was not moving, so it’s hard
to determine whether the weaver ants caught this roach and killed it or scavenged it and
simply picked up the dead carcass from somewhere. Now I was shocked when I saw the weavers had
captured a huge queen alate of a black species of ant I’m not too sure of! Check it out! See her wings? The queen alate is actually still alive, as
you can see her moving her legs, and check it out: you can actually see her stinger retracting
desperately to defend herself during these final fateful moments. Now this queen alate was surely captured and
sprayed with acid. She must’ve just had her nuptial flight
recently, and probably even mated, but unlucky for her, she fell victim to the weaver ants
and won’t be founding a new colony now. She’s on her way to dying, and the weaver
ants are willing to wait. I find weaver ants prefer holding large, dangerous
prey like this stinging black queen alate in place, until it stops struggling. Carrying her up further, while she’s still
capable of stinging the weaver ants could be a deadly mistake. It’s a sign they understand that transporting
her up the tree right now would be risky and not worth it. These weavers were in no rush and to me this
was a clear display of how intelligent they were, as well! Speaking of stinging, I also spotted the ants
carrying a dead bee up the tree. Could this be a drone that had mated, was
on the way to dying, and was too weak to fly away from the weaver swarm? That’s my guess. Now though it seems all unfortunate insects
that fell within the weaver ants’ paths were as good as dead, there were however some
insects that the weavers did not bother touching. AC Family, meet this caterpillar. With its colourful array of bristly urticating
hair, it strided up the acacia tree of the weaver ants confident that it wouldn’t be
touched. In the natural world, and especially true
with insects, it’s an understood rule that if you have bright colours, it usually means
trouble. It’s called aposematic colouration, and
most predators know to stay clear of the brightly coloured prey. In this case, the urticating hair probably
break off and can be irritating for predatory animals. The weaver ants would probably have a hard
time gripping pivotal areas of this hairy caterpillar’s body, so both insects stay
out of each other’s way. Now, protein isn’t the only food these weaver
ants eat. They also have a sugar tooth! We’ve seen before on this channel that weaver
ants love to milk the plant insects that inhabit the trees they nest in of their sweet secretions
called honeydew. Most trees host a huge array of plant insects,
from mealybugs, to scale insects, to aphids, who feed from the sap of the trees then excrete
the sweet honeydew which the weaver ants cherish. Now check this out, AC Family! I also felt the need to support the weaver
ants by giving them some sweet jelly cups, that I usually feed to my ants at home. Check out this weaver ant as she drinks from
the jelly. You can actually see the internal mechanism
in her throat powering her sucking action. How cool is that? Have you ever seen an ant drink like this? It’s like we’ve got x-ray vision. Watching her drink from the jelly was somehow
quite gratifying and relaxing. Now one of the strangest things, I saw the
weaver ants taking up to their nest was this strange greenish black stuff. Can you guys guess what this is? Turns out, weavers will even collect and feed
from fresh bird poop! That’s right! They eat bird droppings. Guess one animal’s waste is another animal’s
food! I even spotted a green ant, with its social
stomach completely filled with green bird poop which you could see through its body! Kinda gross but cool but still gross... But now, guys, to show you what you’ve all
been waiting for. It turns out the weaver ants were out on a
hunt for one particularly favoured morsel, that surprisingly the weaver ants are crazy
for. I managed to catch sight of weaver ants clearly,
actively hunting for fire ants! As mentioned, at this time of the year, the
new first generation of fire ant workers are emerging from the soils for the first time
with the sole mission to find food for their starving queen mothers, who hadn’t eaten
once since late last year, since after mating these queens went underground to raise this
first generation of workers. And so, for these weaver ants, it meant that
it was now their annual fire ant hunting season. As we saw last year at this time, the first
generation of fire ant workers, also known as nanitics aren’t exactly the toughest
ants. In fact, their smaller, weaker, aren’t as
sting happy, and are kind of scaredy cats. This means that every time at this year the
weaver ants have a blast picking off these fire ant nanitics one by one. AC Family, let’s take the time now to watch
these weaver ants hunt and seize their fire ant nanitics. Warning, though, if you’re a fire ant lover,
these scenes may be triggering. Wasn’t that crazy, guys? At one point, I caught a fire ant locked tightly
around a weaver ant’s antenna. OK, so one point for the fire ants because
of this brave little one! I also believe the weaver ants had totally
annihilated a starting fire ant nest that had the misfortune of starting at the foot
of the weaver ant tree! Talk about fire anting up the wrong tree… OK, bad pun! But though this was kind of a fire ant blood
bath, it was assuring to know that in killing and eliminating these fire ant nantics, the
weaver ants were in turn keeping the fire ant populations in Antopia down. These pioneering nanitics are their queen’s
lifelines to success, and the survival of their colonies depends solely on whether or
not the nantics are able to find a first meal. If these nantics were successful at finding
food and bringing it back to their queens, that would be all it would require for the
fire ant queens to begin the literal egg-laying explosion process of brood. You guys saw last year back when we were raising
the Phoenix Empire how quickly they proceeded from a tiny colony of nantics to a massive
colony of millions in just a few short months! It was absolutely critical for these weaver
ants, the most powerful ants of Team Natives, to kill off as many of these pioneering fire
nanitics as possible. It was literally a serious matter of life
or death of everyone in Antopia! So, AC Family, now that we’ve seen and learned
all that we have today, I was thinking that perhaps we could give the entire population
of weaver ants in Antopia an official name! This is the very first time on the channel,
we’ve ever named a wild ant colony, and actually the first time we’ve also ever
given a name to an entire wild population of an ant species in an area, and so I find
this super exciting! So, guys, leave your name suggestions for
Antopia’s Weaver Ants in the comments, and I’ll go through all of them along with your
AC Senate, and select my Top 5 favourites that all of us can vote on in a future video. Be sure to think carefully for a suitable
name, guys, and do feel free to LIKE your favourite name suggestions so they get bumped
up for the AC Senate and I to see. The AC Senate by the way, guys are a special
team of channel supporters that have special rights, inside information, and perks on this
channel. You’ll see who the AC Senate members are
among you in the comments, as they sport badges with various colours next to their names. Do be sure to greet and honour these highly
dignified members of the AC Family. A simple “BOW” would do. You can click here to learn more about joining
the great AC Senate. And so, as we’ve seen over the past several
videos, exploring this vast and complex world we call Antopia, the plot thickens, wars are
fought, and new epic stories of nature come to play right before our inquiring eyes. I feel these great weaver ants will continue
to do their excellent work at hunting and controlling insect populations, including
that of the highly invasive fire ant colonies of Antopia that possess the power to completely
destroy its precious ecosystem. It’s also why I’m so glad that back when
we were still drawing up the plans for the Ant House construction with our architect
two years ago, I made sure that we would save the towering old growth trees, growing everywhere
on the property, and simply build the Ant House around these trees. Could you imagine if we hadn’t, and all
the trees in the area were clear cut? This would have destroyed weaver ant nests,
driving them out of the area, and thereby tipped the scale of power into the hands of
the fire ant populations of Antopia. There would be no predators to hunt down the
fire ant nanitics emerging right now at this time of the year, which would give these nantics
the freedom to find food for their respective queens waiting for them in their burrows,
thereby amassing millions upon millions of fire ants for an Antopian fire ant takeover,
an event which would be a literal death spell to all of Antopia’s life. It’s also why I plan on planting a tonne
more trees and shrubs in the yard, so we can encourage more of these awesome weaver ant
colonies to move in and give them more nesting sites so they can act as Antopia’s official
guardians against the destructive fire ant invaders, and truly take their throne as the
longtime native rulers of the land. Until our next epic visit to these lush tropical
lands of Antopia, thank you for watching and supporting the ants. It’s ant love forever! 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. Be sure to visit AntsCanada.com for all your
ant keeping and collecting gear shipped to you in a special package from our ant-loving
facility in the USA In this week’s AC Question of the Week we
ask: Name one item on a weaver ant’s menu?
