Pet Fire Ant

Remember this article is always updating and changing. So whatever you read now you can check back later, preferably few days later, for more updates.

Day 1: Today is not actually day 1. I've had this hybrid amt for a while but I just decided to start this journal today. The workers are still trying to break out of their cotton, I don't know what is taking them so long. When they are determined to dig, they dig fast. They should be out after school. The queen ant doesn't seem to be taking care of any brood, I think she is waiting for the workers to break out. But then what happened to the last larvae? Anyways I can't make out how the workers look like but if I'm correct about the combination of species this ant is, the worker should have an abnormally big head. Right now I think the species combination of this ant is phiedole morrisii, phiedole obtusospinosa, labidus coecus, and camponotus pennscylvanius. It sounds crazy to me, ants of completely different sub-families, let alone genera, should not be able to breed together. But I found some evidence suggesting my hybrid idea ranging from the petiole to the fact that the first batch of workers became pupae about as long as the width of an average 4mm pencil which are now hatched and should be around 8 mm long, about the size of a phiedole obtusospinosa supermajor.

The ants have not broken out. They just started pushing another random place. I think it's time I help.

Day 5: I have been really busy. The ants just won't come out even though I made a wide open hole for them to exit. I think I will have to move them into that new nest I'm getting because they are going to die if I leave them their.

Day 8: The queen with workers died and I do not know where the workers have gone. I only have two healthy queen of this hybrid left so I'm focusing full attention on them. I also got two more queens of this hybrid luckily but both are weak. I quickly placed them on sugar water cottons so they drink up and become strong again. I'm going to remove them from the cotton now so they don't get too sticky.

I just checked on them and one of the queens from the pool died but the other one recovered and is walking around her half bottle. I kept the body of the dead queen to observe her closer. I also started a kind of test to see whether the queens will accept each other. Last time when I did it with a different queen of the same hybrid, they never became aggressive but the pool queen died because she was weak. Now I just have to wait for the workers to come after the queens meet. This is the true test because I found out that fire ant queens will accept each other at first btu the workers won't and kill till there is one queen remaining. So if the workers for these ants kill one of these queens, that'll probably mean they are just fire ants. I also noticed that these ants have legs that can grip onto almost anything very well so even when they die they almost always have at least one leg gripping the walls holding the body up. But what I don't understand is that even though they can grip onto almost anything including plastic, sometimes they can walk around the plastic walls but sometimes they start having difficulty and keep slowly sliding down the plastic even when nothing has changed in the plastic. In fact just now one of the queens had one of her legs stuck on the plastic wall and once she freed it she started slowly sliding down the plastic walls but she has always been able to grip the plastic well.

I did the craziest thing an ant keeper could probably do, I got some pavement ants from outside and placed one into the bottle of the 2 hybrids. I wanted to see how the ants would react and if you think about it, if they are hybrids the queen ants will accept the pavement ants as their families have done with other species probably. And fire ants, known for their aggression, will quickly eliminate other species or quickly become aggressive. And surprisingly there is no abnormal aggressive type reaction happening between all the queens right now. I'm going to wait just in case the "peaceful new queen" pheromone is keeping the pavement ant queen alive right now.

Day 9: I'm surprised, there is absolutely no sign of aggression from any queens, after a full night the hybrids and the pavement ant queens must have met at one point but there are no injuries and panic. I'm going to wait one more day till I declare the queens friendly with each other as sometimes the nuptial flight mode pheromone on queens can stay for at most 48 hours. If they don't kill the pavement ant queen by then, these ants will be declared friends.

Day 10: Something mysterious happened, the pavement ant queen in the bottle suddenly died today but she had no visible wounds. But when I looked at my pavement ant bottle to see if I could move another pavement ant queen to my hybrid queens. All four of them was dead on the spot and nothing was wrong with any of the bottles. The hybrid ant queens survived. The only answer I have is probably lack of water which my hybrids seem to handle well with but I thought pavement ant queens can also survive lack of water. But anyways I realized the hybrids past the test. I forgot it's not pheromones new queens release to calm other queens. It is actually instinct from other new queens that tell them not to waste energy killing a different queen. And since that instinct was long gone in the hybrid ants, they would have had no trouble killing the pavement ant queen. But they didn't kill the pavement ant. Anyways I still want to add a queen ant like a pavement ant or something else in there to see if the hybrid ants will grow a colony with those ants. Maybe I shouldn't use pavement ants, they get super weak and usually die if they are from the pool.

I moved the queens into their chambers and there is something interesting, two of the queens are squeezing themselves all the way to the back kind of just relaxing there in the wet portion while one positioned herself near the entrance and is just standing still. I also noticed they are unnaturally hairy as you can see in the picture of one of the hybrids on the abdomen. The bright orange dots seems to be dust from the arena caught on the ants thorax.

Day 13: I finally got another pavement ant queen and I think it's safe to say that the hybrids are friendly with pavement ant. The pavement ant literally just walked over the hybrids and walked by them side by side and there was no reaction. And also for some reason the egg that they laid yesterday is now longer and is a larvae but it's just becoming common.

Day 23: I found that this ant is not a hybrid, it's 100 percent a fire ant specifically solopensis invicta. All the queen ants except the one with wings suddenly died. I have no idea what the winged queen is doing, she scattered her eggs all over the ground and is sitting at the entrance.