The Traumatizing Reality of Being An Ant

Just a note, it was pretty difficult to find clips of every exact species mentioned so they’re are gonna be points in the video where the animal I’m talking about isn’t the exact species being shown, like with the snail part. In that case, the animal shown was a close enough relative to still convey my point. Just clarifying to avoid any confusion.

Remember kids, if you ever feel bad, remember you could be an ant

Ants are the Warhammer 40K of the insect world

I will forever remember the war I witnessed between two different ant species in grandma's old house in the country. There had always been a species of small ants there, which I will call minis, that mostly kept out of sight, minding their ant business, but a few years back, for a few months there had been a steady increase of another species of much bigger ants I will call giants, like 3-4 times the size of the small ones, and these were a lot bolder, climbing our tables and other outdoor furniture. For context, we were on a veranda/balcony two stories above the actual yard, as the house was basically built on a cliff. One morning I went to the balcony and noticed there were a lot more minis than usual, in thick marching lines, climbing the plants that wrapped around the columns from the yard to the balcony to the plant canopy that shaded the balcony, and I could see them converge on specific spots. On closer look these spots were the giants, surrounded by minis biting and tearing at them. Each mini the giants killed two more would take its place. On the balcony wall, on the vases, on the plant canopy above my head. It was a merciless battlefield, and it was carnage. Giants running as fast as they could only to run into another column of minis who promptly tore into them, tripping and falling from the railings, falling from the canopy in balls of minis surrounding a giant and splatting on the floor. I followed one giant, as the minis latched onto it and tore it apart, legs, antennas. The giant fought for its life, and there was a ring of dead minis around it, but it was overwhelmed. You can't fight a horde solo. It moved slower and slower under the attack until it stopped, and the minis dispersed, looking for the next giant, until it dared twitch and it was swarmed again, and left with even less of a corpse. This battle lasted the whole day. And to top off this insanity, around noon as I was observing I saw a fat bee and a wasp also fall from the canopy and fall to the ground with an audible thunk with the wasp stinging the ever living shit out of the bee until it stopped moving, and the wasp carried the bee away with a super loud buzzing of wings, because as I said it was a fat bee. The next day the balcony was littered with ant corpses. I never saw a single giant there again. Moral of the story: nature is hardcore.

That ending was deep. I didn’t expect this video about ants to teach me that my life is in a downward spiral.

"The thing about a death spiral is, you might not know you're in it until it's too late." Damn, that was raw. I got chills.

"Ant politics means if the ant queen gets too selfish, she gets executed." Damn, wish we took a page out of their book, eh?

Ant lions are one of my favorite bugs, not only because I feel like my home is ant-proofed whenever they post up around my porch, but they metamorphosize into basically a completely different insect. They go from a weird little pincer monster with too much cake to an elegant dragonfly. That's some Pokemon stuff.

"The thing about a death spiral is, you may not realize you're in it until its too late." That hit HARD!

Now that's a intimidating thumbnail...

As an ant, I appreciate you spreading awareness 🐜

An interesting thing about the cordyceps fungus, it seems that the fungus grows its own replacement of the nervous system in order to move the ant, and it buts out the signals from the ant brain. Basically the brain is still alive and conscious, but no longer has control of its body. Absolutely horrifying, and im glad that the fungus cant affect humans.

Love your fast-paced narration and deadpan delivery of jokes. Also love the selection of topics you're dealing with. Thanks for making it so entertaining!

Once I watched a video on how ants took over another ant colony, stole eggs, decapitated and killed their queen, I honestly was hoping that if I died I wouldn’t be recarinated as an ant

That assassin bug wearing ants like armour is the most metal thing I’ve seen in a while. An ants’ life is basically a tug of war between Game of Thrones and cosmic horror.

these type of ants could easily make ant horror movies with ants as the main characterd

I honestly respect these long form content videos. so much more Info can be deliversed than in a 30 second vine. Keep it going mate.

A cool note about the feeding eachother thing, theres a species of ant called the Honeypot ant. In most species, worker ants have a stomach called a Work Stomach that is meant to hold food instead of digest it, but Honeypots take it to the next level. Their work stomachs can expand MASSIVELY, and certain individuals will turn themselves into a living pantry for their fellow ants. This is so the colony doesn't starve when food becomes to scarce or dangerous to gather since they live mostly in very arid deserts. They pantry ants basically get to sit at home being cared for by the colony until they need to ration out the nectar they've been holding onto. They aren't harmed in the process, but while their stomachs are gorged they can't really move a whole lot and can't defend themselves very well. They end up looking like a ball with an ant's body attached to it.

If I had a nickel for every organism that turns ants into zombies in order to reproduce, I'd have three nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened thrice

Imagine a ant movie like that.