I Caught The Strangest Queen Ant I've Ever Seen

Oh man! You guys will totally find that what I managed to capture this week is a bit strange. It's a

queen

ant, but not just any

queen

ant. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the

strangest

queen ant I have

ever

seen

! SUBSCRIBE to the channel and press the BELL icon. Welcome to the AC family. Enjoy! So, while I was supervising the construction of our future Ant House, which by the way, as an update is still under construction and should be finished in a few more months, I felt a little tingle in my arm and boom! I found this.

Check it out! From afar, one might not even realize that this is an ant, much less a queen ant. To the average eye, it could easily be mistaken for some other elongated insect, perhaps a wandering beetle or a black grub of some sort, but, AC family, we know better. Here is the queen ant that I managed to catch in our own lands of Antopia. Isn't it impressive? So I'll tell you what I know about her species in just a second, but stay tuned until the end as I'll need your opinions on something related to this queen ant, as well as share with you some not-so-good news. that happened this week, which is relevant to this ant, as well as the marauding ants you saw in last week's video and many other ant species featured on this channel.

You'll see what I mean later. But back to our new queen. The first thing you might notice is the unique, slender body shape of this queen ant. There's a reason their species has this unique body shape, and you'll see why later. But its slender shape is what gives its species its name. It is what is known as a “thin ant” of the genus Tetraponera. I love her shape, from her rectangular head with huge oval alien-like eyes, her slender thorax with scars on her wings, which are indicators that she is actually a queen, her long, thin waist segment known as a petiole. and his gaster long and thin. which ends in a point, and you guessed it: it has a stinger there.

So the moment I saw her crawling on my arm, I was careful not to hug her or make her feel threatened. I had n

ever

been stung by a skinny ant before, nor was I willing to find out if and how much skinny ant bites hurt. She was actually quite cooperative and happily crawled into this test tube to get comfortable. But now, this is what happens with this queen ant. Because of its thin gaster, I suspected that it was what is called a semi-claustral species, that is, during the period in which it founds its colony, it still hunts for food, unlike claustral ant species like our carpenter ants, which naturally have large gasters. that fast completely without food during the entire 2-month period of the colony founding process.

There were times when I saw this queen pacing around the test tube, which to me meant that she was probably looking for some food, so AC Family, let's feed the Royal Highness of her, shall we? I grabbed some mango flavored ant jelly. I think she'll really love this. I brought the cotton blocker to her test tube, placed it in a small drop with a toothpick, and recapped the test tube. AC family, let's look. I think she could instantly smell the nearby jelly. And it wasn't long before she found our jelly offering and started drinking. Mmmm… Impressive!

I noticed her testing the gelatin in different places in the dough. How nice to see her think this way. Oops! She slipped and got out a little, but don't worry, she's back! While she was feeding on the gelatin, I could really appreciate the impressive details of her exoskeleton and the design of her body. Look how soft it is and the short but slender shape of her legs. Now, as we've already mentioned, there's a reason why her body is shaped like this, and to understand why, we'll have to go back to Antopia. The forest at the back of Antopia, i.e. our Ant House property, is full of intertwined dead and decaying branches, and this is the prime habitat for spindly ants.

The slender ants are perfectly adapted to fast-paced life on the dead branches that form their trails like slender ant highways. The ants actually live inside the branches that exit and enter their nest at key holes within the wood. This is why slender ants have their unique streamlined shape. They need to fit inside the narrow tunnels of their branch nests, which is a much smaller space than most other wood-nesting ant species, such as carpenter ants, typically require. Although carpenter ants have about the same body length as these thin ants, there is no way that carpenter ants can fit, much less cram an entire nest into these thin branches, but thin ants can, due to their thin bodies! and perfectly adapted!

The lack of body hair and the fact that their legs are closer to the body means that these slender ants can pass each other without problems. But one of the most interesting things about these skinny ants is where they get their sugar! Look over there! These thin ants are milking honeydew from a mealybug, that strange-looking round, whitish thing! These ants care for mealybugs, which act as "cow ants," and honeydew, which is a byproduct excreted by mealybugs, is an important source of sugary food for the spindly ants. Pretty cool, right? No wonder our new, slender queen ant has a sweet tooth!

Now, at the beginning of the video, I mentioned that I would need your opinions on this queen ant, and it is this: First, now that you know everything about her species, what should we call our new, slender queen ant? Leave your name suggestions for our queen in the comments and I'll pick my top 5 for us all to vote on in a future video! Let's give it a cool name, shall we? I can't wait to see if it will give us a small ant colony and if it does, my second question for you is: how should we set up your ant farm?

Should it be a branch terrarium, or perhaps something similar to our carpenter ant setup so we can still see inside the nest? Let me know what you think! Although it is generally more difficult to raise complete colonies in semi-claustral species, I will do my best to raise a colony from it. Wish me luck, guys! For those of you AC family in North, Central and South America, these slender ants may look a lot like their native "twig ants" of the genus Pseudomyrmex, and in fact, the two ant genera live similar lifestyles. Only these thin ants are found in the Old World, specifically in Africa, Madagascar, India, Southeast Asia and Australia.

These spindly ants are like the Old World version of twig ants. It's cool how two unrelated species can divergently evolve body shape simply by occupying the same lifestyle and niche in the ecosystem. Which brings me now to the not-so-good news that happened this week. In my country it made headlines that 375 ants were seized at the border illegally smuggled from Poland. They were mislabeled as “Lego toy” pieces. The moment I saw this, I immediately knew it was for the ant guarding the Black Market. It's news like this that gives ants a bad reputation. Shipping non-native ants directly endangers an ecosystem.

Not only could these Polish ants escape to my country and become invasive, if they fall into the hands of an irresponsible antkeeper, but also who knows if these ants carry some type of pathogen such as a virus that could jump to our local fauna. Ants or something? It is a very bad situation everywhere. The media called these ants "black ants", and I tried to take a closer look at the pictures and videos of the seized ants, and I assume that they are queens of Messor barbarus, a type of polymorphic seed-collecting ant, which also turns out to be being a popular ant species in the ant-keeping hobby in Europe.

All of this especially surprises me, because why would anyone want to import a species of ant here, when, as you have

seen

on the channel, my country has a huge number of incredible species of ants, from these skinny ants to marauding ants, to even weaver ants, jaw-catching ants and even blue ants! Blue! Why oh why send foreign ants? I guess it just goes to show you that sometimes people want what they just don't have, but as I continued to watch our beautiful, slender queen ant peacefully feeding on her jelly, I realized how important it is to not just appreciate what we have. we have, but we also appreciate them enough not to put our selfish desires before the safety of their species and that of all interconnected life within the local ecosystem to which they belong.

To me, that is the essence of love for ants, and so I realize that we, ant keepers, have a continuing responsibility to promote the need for “responsible ant care,” i.e. maintaining only local ant species captured in our gardens. The bigger this hobby becomes, the more critical its defense becomes. Plus, having local ants inspires local conservation, which I think is a fantastic thing. And AC Family, speaking of which, if any of you ever need an ant colony or a queen ant with brood to start raising ants, we have a special page on our website at antscanada.com, under the Queen Ants For tab.

Sale, which can help you connect with ant keepers in your area who sell local ant colonies that are only

caught

in your area. That way, you can purchase local ants and not have to order them from another country or region. I will leave a link in the description box for those looking for local ant colonies with a queen. We've been proudly connecting local ant keepers with local ant colonies for over a decade, and it's great for the hobby, as well as encouraging the growth of ant-keeping communities around the world. Anyway, I have high hopes for our new slender ant queen and am excited to see if she will successfully find a thriving slender ant colony.

Let's keep our fingers crossed and wish this queen all the best! Well, actually, AC Family, because she landed on my arm, I like to imagine that she found us. Thank you all for watching and supporting Ants, guys. It's ant love forever.