A Tale of Two Colonies - Incredible Story of Queen-Worker Ant Adoption & Pleometrosis

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The incredible story of a queen that was exhiled by her own co-queen and children and the adoption of unrelated worker ants that had been orphaned.

Music in this video taken from my album 'Memoirs of a Superhero' available here http://www.MemoirsofaSuperhero.com or iTunes

NOTE: This story is not to encourage ant keepers to begin introducing additional queens to their colony. One must remember that this story worked out because 1) The workers were nantics, meaning they were first generation ants, 2) the nantics were orphaned having lost both their queens, and 3) the queen (i.e. Momma Outcast) had lost her first nantics, her first generation of workers. I learned the hard way that Formica fusca are not truly polygynous. Introduce at your own risk!

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• Formica
• fusca
• colony
• adoption
• foster
• workers
• queen
• duo
• antfarm
• formicarium
• antscanada
• attacking
• pleometrosis

[stahalaep]

Years ago I was working a farm with only workers. after about 3 months they began to die off. I wanted to keep the farm going so I added workers from the same colony as the original workers were from thinking it would be no problem since they come from the same mother. But to my surprise the original farm ants attacked the new ants and prevailed. However with this same species I have also returned ants that were away from the colony for months and they were accepted back without incident.curious

[AntsCanada]

So interesting! Ants are certainly complex little things.

[netnerd5]

i live in england and really want some formica fusca's any ideas how i could get some? =/

[AntsCanada]

Can't people from UK buy ants from AntStore[dot]net?

[bentleyboy72]

song at 4:12 plz?

[AntsCanada]

"The Only One" from my album MEMOIRS OF A SUPERHERO. It's available on iTunes or I'm pretty sure you can find it pirated somewhere LOL!

[DanishnSonic]

song somewhere at 10:40

[DanishnSonic]

beautiful story. queen A died cuz she was injured

[cyrusrom]

You can do the same with the social parasite.

[burningthelegends]

any way i can get a queen in the us

[jaesong]

If I ever get an ant farm, I just want to spoil them by giving a lot of honey. I know I shouldn't but they're so adorable!

[Blaze1951able]

i did this with Camponotus pennsylvanicus was amazing

[robertadamplant]

Kudos: I will try to replicate this study during the forth coming summer.

[SuperYesim18]

great story-teller..... ;p

u rili amazes me..everyday!!

luv u, mwah!

[MrPadrino123]

the ant revolutionary war ended in peace and harminy. sort of. unless if you make the ants go in the same out world

[auttman]

I have never taken an interest in ants nor was I looking for anything on ants. Came across your video and I must say I watched the entire thing. It was very interesting but it would have been nice to see longer picture scenes of the ants. Thanks