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Summarize
To keep ants, you will need: ant nest, feed, feeding area
Recommended Ants for Beginners: Giant Mountain Ant ( e.g. Hitchcock's Giant Mountain Ant )
Ant Food: Specialty feeds, sugar water, bread bugs, cockroaches
Frequency of ant feeding: 1 time per week
Frequency of ants adding water: 1 time per month
Housing environment: room temperature, not more than 32 degrees Celsius
Special Note: No sunlight, no pesticides, no excessive vibration.
What's so interesting about ants?
Ants are very intelligent and organized. Inside the nest, each ant has a different job, such as cleaning, sweeping, foraging, attacking, laying eggs, taking care of their companions and so on.
Imagine watching the queen ants, from being alone, laying eggs and raising children, until a few years later, they become a powerful kingdom with hundreds or thousands of people, and their nests are running as orderly as a human society.
The world works because you give it to it. The most enjoyable part of raising ants is the process and the sense of fulfillment you will get from it.
Preparation
What kind of environment is needed to keep ants?
What do I need to prepare for keeping ants?
First of all, you need to make sure that the right environment, which is very simple, usually as long as the room temperature to keep, avoid keeping in the western sun room, the roof of the building covered room, and at the same time to avoid the presence of pesticides, water fumes, mosquito coils and other poisons.
You can also let the ants live with you. When you are hot, turn on the air-conditioner and the ants will blow the air-conditioner together, thus killing two birds with one stone. Specifically, the temperature for keeping ants ranges from 14 to 32 degrees Celsius, with 26 to 28 degrees Celsius being the best.
Then, prepare ants, ant nests, feeds and other feeding supplies to start cultivating your own kingdom.
How to keep ants?
It is very easy to feed ants, but careful attention is still needed. Ants are easy pets to feed, so just feed them once or twice a week and replenish water once a month, and then decide whether to expand their nests depending on the size of the ant population.
Generally speaking, it takes about a year to fill up a small ant nest, and the nest will not be replaced very often.
Types and Characteristics of Ants
There are more than 300 species of ants in Taiwan, each with unique behaviors and habits, and there are about 10 species that are kept by the mainstream.
Most of the homeowners will start with the Giant Mountain Ants when they first start to keep ants because of their large size, good tolerance, stable growth and easy observation, which gives them the highest success rate.
Especially the abdomen of Giant Mountain Ant can store a lot of food, so it is very interesting to see that after feeding, each of the worker ants in the nest has a butt full of freshly fed food.
Habits and Behavior of Ants
Ants build, dismantle, forage, fetch water, hunt, move, feed, raise young, give birth, mate, bathe, clean, throw away garbage, search for food, protect their territory and colony, and work together.
The ants are able to communicate with each other through chemical signals, allowing each ant to play its own role.
Life cycle of ants
The life cycle of ants can be divided into four stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult.
The queen ant will lay eggs, which will gradually hatch into adults after 1~2 months. The queen ant usually lays a batch of 6 to 12 eggs in 2 to 4 weeks. Therefore, the growth rate of ants is not as fast as one would expect. In the case of giant mountain ants, it takes about a year or more before the ants can grow to over 100 worker ants.
Ant's Social System
Ants are very organized and social insects. There are four classes of ants: queen ants, male ants, soldier ants, and worker ants, each with different appearance, life span, number, and work content.
Take the giant mountain ant as an example, a mature nest with a population of 4 years will have 1 queen ant, tens to hundreds of soldier ants and thousands of worker ants. Meanwhile, male ants will only appear in small numbers during the nuptial season and will not stay in the nest permanently.
How to observe ants?
We can observe the activities inside the nests through the transparent and specially designed nests on one side, as well as placing food in the feeding area to observe the foraging and cooperation of the ants, and some feeders will connect the ants with intricate connecting pipelines to observe the ants' marching and moving.
Points to note when keeping ants
First of all, avoid exposing the ants to external disturbances such as touching the nests or giving the ants too much food. Secondly, clean the feeding area and replace the food regularly to avoid the nest becoming dirty or the ants eating rotten food.
Lastly, make sure that there are no toxins such as insecticides, mosquito coils, etc. in your environment.
The Fun of Keeping Ants
I think there are two main joys in keeping ants
1. Satisfy curiosity
Observing ants is a very interesting thing. Research shows that the behaviors of ants that can be seen by the general public in the wild only account for 30% of the total activity, such as foraging, hunting, carrying, etc., and as much as 70% of the behaviors only occur in the nest.
The interactions inside the nest are more like a microcosm of human society, such as egg laying, feeding, cleaning, environmental maintenance, and even more behaviors that we, as ant scientists, have yet to discover, and which we can only observe if we keep them ourselves.
2. Getting a sense of accomplishment
After years of watching a queen ant laying eggs and raising them, the first worker ants appear and witness the birth of life, eventually reaching hundreds of ants.
Each individual, like a human being, has his own job, role, and interacts with other people, it is like a complete human society. This huge ant kingdom is taken care of and cultivated by you alone, you are the god of this country, you are in charge of everything!
Conclusion
Ants are amazing insects that have a very rich ecology and social behavior. Keeping ants can not only let us understand the life of ants, but also let us feel the mystery of life. We hope that through this "First Time Ant Keeping Tips", more people can understand the fun and method of keeping ants, and unlock the key to a wonderful little world.
FAQs
Where can I get ants?
They can be caught in the wild during the wedding season or purchased from vendors.
Do I need a queen to keep ants?
Only the queen ant lays eggs for the colony to continue and develop, so it is important to have a queen ant to keep ants.
How long can I keep ants?
This depends on the life span of the queen ants. When the queen ants are alive, the colony will be alive; when the queen ants die, the colony will be dead.
Does it take time to raise ants?
Keeping ants takes no time at all, you only need to feed them 1~2 times a week and replenish water once a month.
Is it expensive to keep ants?
Keeping ants can be very expensive or very cheap, depending on the method of keeping ants. However, on average, you can have a complete set of ants keeping supplies (including ants) for about NT$1000 to NT$2000.
