I Fed My Twig Ants a Cockroach

while I was in Florida I managed to capture this beautiful colony of graceful toy Gans I've wanted a colony of twig ants for a while now but they've always proved to be too difficult for me to catch in fact it took me four out of the nine days I was down in Orlando to catch them and now they could finally cross the species off my bucket list events to keep I could begin to experience what it's like to have a real colony of twig ants one with a queen workers and brood The Colony consists of one Queen 20 workers and a hefty amount of brood AKA baby ants as of now these ants are in a simple yet effective setup known as a tubbed and Tube setup everything looked to be fine until I noticed that this Colony wasn't eating anything I had given them I mean they had some honey stored away and some of the workers abdomens but that was pretty much it and in order for this colony to thrive like actually grow they need to consume both sugars and proteins so far they only had sugars and didn't want anything to do with protein-rich foods which in most cases happens to be other bugs foreign I felt like their current home was just a little too humid and maybe that's why they didn't want to eat it was hard to see into their setup at times which also made it difficult to tell if the colony was okay or not so I got to work and began making them a new tubs and Tube setup to make a tubs into setup is quite easy all you need is a container of some sort some sand and of course the test tube for the ants to live in it's also very important that you do not forget the Escape prevention barrier so that your ants don't escape I personally like to use biformica PTFE as my barrier but if you don't have any you could always give these other methods a try to move the ants I started off by removing the lid to the current setup then I began picking out the workers one by one these featherweight forceps allow me to grab the ants without putting too much pressure on their exoskeletons when enough workers were moved out I picked up their testing with my fingers and carefully placed it into their new tubs into setup I then went back to get the rest of the workers and luckily throughout this whole ordeal I didn't get stoned now that the colony was in a seemingly better circumstance I wanted to take this moment to share with you just how cool these ants actually are let's first take a a look at the foraging workers those being the workers running around outside the nest looking for food I noticed one thing about these ants that kind of makes me laugh every time I see it anytime these toy cats run they sort of Bolt around and then stop almost as if they move too fast for themselves and have to refocus every few seconds before running again another thing I noticed is that they have incredible eyesight the eyes on each of these workers are quite large and allow for a wide angle view of its surroundings it's also why they're incredibly difficult to catch they can see you coming from a mile away in the opposite direction they're facing covering the floor of the entire tube are just heaps of brood they are the eggs the larvae and pupae but somewhere in the middle of the tube is actually the queen let's see if you can spot her right there that slightly larger ant believe it or not is the colonies Queen the queen is essentially the heart of the colony and without her the rest of the colony will sadly die off so the workers need to do their best to tend to the queen every second of the day the way twig at workers protect their Queen is rather unorthodox While most pieces of ants when threatened or disturbed bring their Queen deeper into the nest these twig ants instead grab their Crane and run as far from their nest as they can with her this behavior is called tandem running and is a common practice amongst these twig ants usually they pick up a fellow worker or in our case the queen and bring each other wherever they want to go after the queen was brought back into the tube I remember that this colony was still super hungry and looking for food knowing they haven't eaten any insects since I had them I felt like now was the perfect time to give them something and so a semi-crushed mealworm was tossed into their outworld after a few acts ran by the mealworm giving it no mind I realized that maybe they just didn't want it I know they have a sweet tooth so instead of the mealworm I gave them a generous drop of fresh honey and they were quick to start laughing it off it's so cool watching the answer as they drink here we can see as this worker uses its mouth parts to drink the honeydraw a lot of people actually get the ants mandibles confused with their actual mouths just for reference these right here are their mandibles and these are the ants mouth parts by the next morning the leaf had folded over onto itself and judging by the fact that the workers were no longer headed in its direction on purpose I felt like it was time to remove it after opening the lid however I quickly realized that the barrier had become ineffective overnight and the workers began to escape it was likely because I don't have a vent on the lid allowing for the humidity to escape the container this just means that the water vapor condenses on the barrier allowing the ants to run right past it I figured I would fix that later because I wanted to try and feed these ants again I read online that in the wild these ants Hunt Live lipid up Taran larvae which is just a fancy way of saying caterpillars I breed mealworms from my other ant colonies and while they aren't technically caterpillars they're the closest thing I had so I tossed a small one in there to see what they would do the mealworm ran around the entire container a couple of times on skates but eventually it would be approached by a foraging worker The Twig at runs up to the mealworm and launches its first attack it was short-lived however because the worker retreated right after I didn't understand that at first but the mealworm despite being a fairly small one was still too big for these ants I needed a small mealworm so I found the smallest meal room I could find and tossed that one in as well this time the ants behaved a little bit different just watch after introducing the new smaller mealworm into the ants enclosure one of the workers took it amongst herself to go hunt it and instead of just attacking to then run away she attacked again and again several times after getting distracted with the bigger mealworm again She chased a smaller one into the direction of another worker this other worker wasted no time and attacked the small mealworm head-on with his sharp piercing mandibles soon after her sisters joined in on the attack and some of them even started to eat it this lasted for a good five minutes and out of nowhere they all just decided to leave the ants were attacking and even eating the Mueller but for some reason they all suddenly stopped in their tracks there was either something wrong with the mealworm I had given them or they just didn't have the taste for it I was running out of time however because instead of feeding their larvae other insects The Colony would begin to feel the weaker larvae to the stronger larvae and that means that less workers will be closed when they inevitably mature I had another option however fish food I've had ants in the pass that loved fish food so I decided to give it a try with these twig ants I sprinkled some in their outworld right next to their tube they investigated the fish food but overall just ignored it I felt like it was over for this Colony they weren't eating anything and sooner or later they would probably starve to death I was actually going to completely give up but I remember that it had a roach farm and that might have just saved this Colony I took a small roach and placed it on its back so that the ants could sting it without having to flip the roach over themselves and it actually almost worked one of the workers grabbed off to the roach and started to drag it towards the nest where it managed to Sting the roach one good time on its leg I felt like the roach despite being the smallest one I can find was still too big for the workers to take down by themselves so I crushed the roach to the best of my ability and placed it back inside the outworld at this point the ants began to nibble at the roach and lap up some of the hemolymph seeping out of it hemolymph is in simple terms insect blood anyways this process of nibbling and licking lasted for several hours the ants at one point started bringing roach pieces into the nest to feed the rest of the colony and watching as I did that was so relieving because it meant that this colony was no longer serving themselves and I had finally found something that they would eat and feed to each other I also felt much better about myself as an ant keeper I didn't give up and instead I kept trying despite all the disappointments throughout this journey by the next morning the ants had completely hollowed out the roach and all that was left was the outer shell I was so happy to see that this colony had finally eaten something I had given them and I can't wait just to see how well they will do in the future these twigets are just one of many species of ants that I'm currently keeping I also have carpenter ants harvester ants and even a bullet ant Queen I've already uploaded a video about my leafcutter ants and one of my old carpenter ant colonies so be sure to check those out thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Lights Camera Ants

Views: 110,144

Keywords:

Id: 88Hj9W8VX3o

Length: 7min 38sec (458 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 03 2022