There's a Huge War in my Backyard: Ants vs Termites vs Frogs

there is a gigantic war happening in my yard ants different tribes of which are at war for resources territory and food all within my backyard we've called antopia antopia is an almost 3 000 square meter plot of tropical landscape exploding with life dense and towering plants horned beasts that eat them colorfully armored nomads and of course battalions of various warriors the most powerful of which are ant colonies i've been meticulously following this great antopian war and have mapped out the exact locations of all the ant colony encampments i could find and so far i've discovered that there are two main teams of ants team native ants including weaver ants from the treetops asian marauder ants with their huge super majors big headed ants from the outer bamboo forests elusive adonta panera ants twig ants inhabiting stick hollows and recently identified flower ants living in acacia bark these native ants have lived in antopia for millions of years in the land passed down to them from their ancestors but today they fight a great war against their arch enemies team invasive ants black crazy ants ghost ants pharaoh ants and the fearless fire ants these invasive ant newcomers have only recently been introduced to antopia by way of human activities over the last few decades and have been mercilessly out competing displacing and killing team native ants for the abundance of food resources and space that exists here now initially i thought team native ants was winning this war against team invasive ants but after seeing what i'm about to show you today i fear the tables may be turning and if team invasive ants does win the war and they manage to completely wipe out team native ants this could mean the ultimate destruction of antopia's delicate ecosystem now if you thought all of this was crazy enough guys the plot just got crazier it turns out there are other tribes of ants living in antopia to add to the map that i hadn't spotted before as well as the presence of some well-known ant enemies termites and frogs ladies and gentlemen put on your battle gear because it's time to venture into the trenches of the antopian war here on the antscanada ant channel please subscribe to my channel and hit the bell icon welcome to the ac family enjoy ac family there's so much i have to show you i was able to visit the ant house this week future location of ant room 2.0 for our various pet ant colonies and i'm pleased to share that construction is coming along well and on schedule but checking the yard antopia was again such an eye opener there was so much that goes on in the micro world outside that we are totally oblivious to so in a video two weeks ago we saw that team native ants seem to have a good upper hand in the great antopian war against team invasive ants simply because the native ant sightings appeared to outnumber the invasive ones and we even saw a killed invasive fire ant in the powerful jaws of a native weaver ant but as you'll see in a second i'm not so sure anymore if that will continue to be the case i want to know what you guys think so keep on watching until the end and let me know your opinions the first area of concern are these girls fire ants these ladies are ferocious look at how fierce they are as they dig out new burrows digging out new burrows means this colony is expanding quickly now seeing the fire ants digging so eagerly concerns me first because we've already mapped two separate fire ant colonies in antopia and this one which isn't too close to the other colonies is possibly a third fire ant colony living in entopia or second this nest opening here could simply be a connection to one of the other colonies via an extensive underground tunnel that idea scares me because that means this fire ant colony must be absolutely massive anyone who knows fire ants knows their trouble they are concerning agricultural pests in certain places of the world including the us as they wipe out and or displace local ants and animals and also farm and protect plant parasites like aphids and plant insects as we saw in our last video and this endangers agricultural crops we are no stranger to fire ants as we currently care for the phoenix empire our massive colony of fire ants and have long known how savage they are after years of keeping and performing experiments with the fire nation my former fire ant colony fire ants are nimble enough to climb along a tightrope to get to food are completely waterproof as they float on water and can scuba dive have a crazy sting that i can testify does not tickle and reproduce super fast it only took seven months for our phoenix empire to get from just a queen to a full-blown colony of millions now imagine a wildfire ant colony where you have a crazy abundance of food plant insects and space to nest our phoenix empire grew on a couple roaches a day and jelly cups and were restricted to a moated terrarium but in the wild ants simply don't have portioned feeding regimes and are 100 free to expand outwards and create massive underground nests this is why seeing these fire ants here concerns me because this colony could possibly be huge and where there is a huge colony you know that every mouth of that colony needs to be fed ac family check out what else i saw just nearby was a meat fest fire ants engaged in a frenzy feasting on a frog they had managed to kill if you're an og of this channel you might recognize this frog as it is a native microhilid frog the same type of frog i used to eliminate zombie might infested yellow crazy ants within the hacienda del dorado a couple years back they usually feed on ants but it seems this poor frog picked on the wrong ants or at least had not evolved to eat and deal with ants like fire ants like a vicious pack of meat hungry velociraptors the fire ants tore deep into the frog's carcass and carried the chunks of frog meat back to the colony for further processing check out that fire ant super major working on snipping off that meat chunk again seeing the fire ants like this was concerning because it was evidence that the fire ants were officially attacking local wildlife to think an ant eating frog was now prey to ants is an irony that pains me with a growing population the fire ants lust for meat was growing i also have a few chickens on the property for all of you in the u.s who live in fire ant country should i worry about the fire ants eating my chickens and or their chicks how about my goats are they safe i have a lot of experience with fire ants as pets but literally zero experience with living on their land or land there in the process of dominating rather whatever the case these fire ants which were members of team invasive ants were very scary simply due to the possibility of sheer size and their hunger for meat but now ac family for another very concerning sight i saw not too far away racing along trails that stretched on for meters and meters were these little turbos ac family these are ghost ants also members of team invasive ants now in a previous video we simply spotted them here along the wall when we first laid down ant baits in an experiment to see what species of ants we'd lure out from the yard now seeing these rapidly flowing trails of ghost dance carrying food and brood around was also concerning because it was impossible to tell if these were the same colony as we saw a few weeks back along the wall or a totally new colony or possibly both here's why ghost dance like very many other notorious invasive ants except for fire ants can have multiple queens in a single colony not only that but two different colonies of ghost ants can actually join forces and fuse to create huge super colonies not only that but ghost ants are nomadic ants and are constantly on the move without a permanent home so they travel to where food is all this makes ghost dance truly a force to reckon with in the antopian war they may be small but like the fire ants they conquer by sheer numbers they might not have a painful sting nor a lust for meat like fire ants do but they are experts at driving out ants from their nests they can infiltrate the nest entrances of ants and completely swarm ant colonies ransacking nests of ant brood and food driving out entire colonies from their homes again the ghost ant lifestyle makes them one of the world's most pestiferous invasive ants and i've seen them in every tropical and subtropical country of the world i've ever visited from mexico to cuba to sri lanka micronesia borneo and every country here in southeast asia so it seems ac family that perhaps my logic of counting the number of team native versus team invasive ant sightings might not have been the most accurate way to determine who was winning this great antopian war because doing so failed to take into consideration the volume of ants per colony there could be eight colonies of native ants in an area and only two colonies of invasive ones for instance but the native ants don't stand a chance if the two invasive ant colonies are massive in size and hard to combat so ac family i'm going to need your opinions on what to do and i do have two very different options for you guys to assess but before that i have another interesting colony to introduce you guys to that i discovered living in antopia but this time this wasn't a colony of ants within this outcrop of rotting bamboo lays a silent colony of insects that have long been fighting a war with ants over millions of years in earth's history they're not related to ants and biologically speaking they are very different creatures ac family meet the colony of termites i found living in antopia aren't they spectacular this termite colony lives discreetly in some rotting bamboo now about the many differences between ants and termites the first thing that may surprise you is that termites are actually more related to roaches than to ants also they actually eat and digest wood unlike ants which simply live and burrow into wood but discard all the wood dust also in an ant colony the workers are all barren females in termites the workers are both barren males and females another thing that makes them unique is that they don't undergo complete metamorphosis like ants do having stages of egg larva pupa than adult termites simply have an egg then hatch into a small version of their adult form called a nymph then grow into an adult another cool difference is that a termite colony actually has both a queen and a king they pair up during nuptial flight then stay together for life raising a termite kingdom together in ants however males die after mating leaving the queen to be a single mother to raise her colony on her own unless of course she's one of those species where multiple queens raised their young together but still no kings exist in the ant world just queens wow guys check out that soldier termites like ants do have special workers these soldiers for defense and speaking of which ac family as i watched the cute termites moving around going about their business in the rotting bamboo a commotion caught my eye ants ants had appeared on the scene to snatch and ransack the termite colony an asian marauder ant came and seized a termite carrying it back to the nest to feed on i spotted another carrying one back omg an ant versus termite war was happening right now termites are an excellent and important food source for ants as their bodies are soft and juicy packed to the cuticle with valuable nutrients check this out guys at first glance it looked like these two asian marauder ants were carrying the seized termite but upon closer inspection one of the ants had died and was stuck to some glue-like material that was actually making it harder for the other ant to carry the termite around you know what this glue-like material was it's something the termites are able to produce as a defense they use it to build their tunnels but can also shoot it out to form a sticky slime that makes it hard for ants to move around once they get stuck in it termite glue was the termite's defense against the ants but it didn't stop the ants from coming and ac family i wasn't prepared to see the ants that appeared on the scene next asian bullet ants what we have asian bullet ants in how awesome we are no stranger to these savage girls as we own two colonies known together as the black panthers and we know full well how much they love termite meat snatched whoa the asian bullet ant stung and took a termite home these huge black ants with a sting that hurts like crazy are true hunters and it seemed word of the termites had made its way to their nest somewhere i'm happy to report that these ants belong to teen native ants and i was actually happy to see them here snatching termites left right and center this was native food for natives only suddenly another group of ants appeared on the scene big headed ants again from team native ants they were quick to snatch up some termites and take them home although a couple sadly got caught in the termite glue then yet another tribe belonging to team native ants showed up oh danta panera i rarely get a chance to film these ants well because they're constantly on the move i was happy to see them here at the termite nest hunting for termites too along with their various fellow native ants but then enemies ghost ants had discovered the termite fun and were quick to swarm onto the scene for termite meat or perhaps attempt to steal the other ants catches if there was only a way i could weed these ghost ants out speaking of which as this battle between ants and termites unfolds i'm going to take this time now to ask you guys your opinions on dealing with team invasives so as you can see team native ant still seems to be okay in terms of competition for food but members of team invasives are already showing signs of impacting antopia's native ecosystem as we saw fire ants are killing native frogs and ghost ants are flowing into antopia like crazy and crashing into team native ant termite hunting parties so there are two options i've considered the first option is the merciless option many myrmicologists suggest pouring boiling water repeatedly over fire ant nests this of course is a moral struggle for me and i've tried to run polls on twitter but regardless of the results it's just so anti-ant to do this or maybe it's anti-ant not to pour boiling water on the invasives i don't know i don't think the boiling water would work against the ghost ants because their colonies and their queens are just too spread out and again they'll just come pouring back in even if we did manage to boil a good amount of the colony the second option is a more eco-friendly option in my mind and that is to simply support team native ants by feeding native ant colonies directly at their nests so they claim food first i could plant more trees and shrubs to encourage more native arboreal species like weaver ants to inhabit antopia which we already know are successful fire ant killers i could also release native ants into the area i've been planning on releasing our bobble heads of a colony of big headed ants that i've been keeping for a couple years now and am okay to let go because just a few weeks ago i received a huge super colony of a very invasive big headed ant species so i'm not letting it go and i don't have a need for two big-headed ant colonies so what do you guys think of that idea i could also release one of my two teams of asian bullet ants to help support the bullet and population of antopia let me know what you guys think maybe you feel i shouldn't do either and should just not interfere and allow nature to take its course i'm interested to hear what you guys think ac family an hour later the sight of the termite nest was deserted by the teams of ants the termites had managed to seal up all holes to their nests with termite glue and there was no more opportunity for the ants to access them the microworld out in the wild is truly mind-blowing this channel has mostly been dedicated to filming the ants in elaborate ant farm setups and terrariums and it has helped us learn about the ants we love in a very controlled and rather clinical way but i've realized that in the real world there's a whole slew of different rules and circumstances that apply to every living thing in it where the law of survival of the fittest truly reigns supreme now that we're in the process of moving out of my condo in the concrete jungle and literally into the middle of an actual jungle farm i've discovered there's an entirely different and infinitely larger world on the outside i'm sure what we saw today is only a tiny glimpse of the full complex picture of the everyday stories that happen in antopia and i look forward to discovering more of the secrets this enchanted land holds it's the terrarium of mother nature guys let's hope team native ants keeps on persevering and pushing back their invasive enemies for their sake and that of all the precious life of antopia until our next visit to our great backyard thank you for watching and supporting the ants it's ant love forever ac family did you enjoy this week's episode don't worry this channel will still be about our pet ants in the antiverse but i think filming and documenting the real life stories of the wild ants of antopia is just as cool what do you guys think so many more ant videos are ahead so if you haven't yet do smash that subscribe button and bell icon now and hit all so you get notified at every upload also don't forget to hit the like button every single time including now it would really mean a lot to me guys thank you ac inner colony i have left a hidden cookie for you here if you would like to watch extended play footage of the ants and termites of antopia go check them out and guys in case you haven't heard yet our ac holiday sale 2020 where you get 20 off our ac and tower small and ac hybrid nest mini is still in effect at our shop at antscanada.com and on top of that if you use the promo code ant love forever 2020 you get our ultimate ant keeping handbook ebook complete with care guides on specifically commonly kept and species totally free which you can add to your cart before checking out our easy to use ant farms which you see me use in my videos make an awesome holiday gift for anyone who loves ants we ship worldwide and also offer full email support if you need our help plus if you didn't catch a queen ant the season and need ants just visit the queen ants for sale tab on our site to look for an ant colony seller in your area just a reminder that though it's too late to order for delivery before christmas this awesome promo still continues until january 1st 2021 so visit antscanada.com today and get your discount to own your very first ac ant farm and pet ant colony and now it's time for the ac question of the week last week we asked what is your favorite feature about this crystal cave temple terrarium congratulations to stahl heart 385 who answered my favorite feature is hands down the glowing crystals congratulations style heart 385 you just won a free ultimate ant keeping handbook from our shop in this week's ac question of the week we ask name one difference between termites and ants leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free ultimate ant keeping handbook from our shop hope you can subscribe to the channel as we upload every saturday at 8 am eastern standard time please remember to like comment share and subscribe if you enjoyed this video to help us keep making more it's ant love forever

Channel: AntsCanada

Views: 558,419

Rating: 4.9490805 out of 5

Keywords: ants, pets, terrarium, ant farm, antfarm, antscanada, animals, insects, exotic pets, myrmecology, antopia, ecosystem, ant house, 2021

Id: NMPMjwLDMG0

Length: 21min 36sec (1296 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2021