Wow so cool

Thank you so much, man! You've been such an incredible resource of information tbrough this whole thing! Termites are pretty awesome!

it the guy yoooooooooooooooooooo

Love watching your shows on Sat keep up the good work

Hi cicada fun and antscanada

As with the bees comb, no?

Looks like a morel fungus fruiting body. Same function makes the same form I guess!

Same with brains and intestines. They all look similar for the same reason

Yeah, because THE HEXAGON IS THE BESTAGON

It is done that way because the fungus needs to be able to breathe. Remember that unlike plants which can produce their own oxygen through photosynthesis, to breathe just like animal tissue. I was actually going to comment it separately but since you already brought up the surface area point, it just seems better to tag it on here. An important note is that this looks quite similar to the internal breathing structures of most insects: Unlike vertebrates like us how have our oxygen delivered through our circulatory system, insects get their oxygen directly from their respiratory system which weaves through their body rather than being handled by a distinct organ structure like our lungs. Grasshoppers are often used as the textbook insect body and if you search "grasshopper pulmonary structures" on google as I did just now you can see some of it yourself. For any who want a more in depth explanation of what they are seeing: Before I start, I'd like to remind people (or let them know) that insects and other protostomes will often have their nerve chords running along their front or ventral side instead of the back or dorsal side of us deuterostomes so that is why you see structures where we would normally find our spines. With that out the way, the most important two structures in this network are the spiracles and the air sacs. The spiracles in grasshoppers are advanced structures often found only in flying insect species as they have a sphincter muscle guarding the entrance to their pulmonary network. More simple spiracles are literally just openings and you often find those in species you can kill by covering them with salt as the drying out of any breathing structure (yes even ours so you can technically kill yourself by snorting a ton of salt) will cause an inability for gas exchange to happen suffocating the individual. The air sacs on the other hand are the closest to our lungs that insects get as they are structures which push air out and pull it in to cycle oxygen faster. The air sacs, like the more guarded spiracles are only found in species that actually need to breath faster and so are usually only found in insects who need to support flight muscles. As the termites have soft bodies, you can actually watch their air sacs pumping but just remember they don't exactly breathe like we do, it just looks very similar. Well I think that covers all of it. Just remember though that just like the insects, the fungi still needs to breathe so the structures of the chambers as well as the comb-like structure of the fungal growth media are all used to increase the gas exchange between the fungi and the air will have to maximize the surface area of contact just like our alveoli, the insect's air-sac powered tracheal network and even combustion engine air intakes (guess what we based that on). If you want to take away something away of the biochemistry of why it needs to both have high surface area and be wet note that, for oxygen to be dissolved into our body fluids, it needs to be contacting oxygen poor fluids with almost no barrier (we have a literally one cell thick layer between our lung's blood and the air, the insect's have their hemolymph [their blood] bathing their trachea, and the fugus's mycellia [that white fuzz looking stuff] have cells in direct contact with open air). Ant and termite fungal agriculture is then an architectural battle to both maintain a solid structure (like the various breathing structures or growth media) while maximizing the one-cell layer contact with the air

Same! Termites are a whole new world!

Didn't expect to see you here

Lathland! Cosmoteer is a series I wish to be continued 😜

Love your from the depths stuff!

didnt expect the glorious lathrix in here with the same hobby like me

It’s been more than 200 million years so of course they would

*gasp* a mushroom wizard

*celebratory applause

Yeah, he always thinks ahead, that's why so many of his termite colonies died...

I respect Ants Canada's determination to do the right thing even if that means not being able to do what he wants to do.

@@LordDragox412 He IS taking advice from a person with more termite experience than he has, and he doesn’t pretend to know everything. The keeping of any species is susceptible to any number of things that can cause a colony to fail, just as most mated pairs of termites or fertilized Queen ants do not succeed in Nature. That is why so many are involved in each nuptial flight.🖤🇨🇦

Aren’t we all 😀😀😀😀

What about the honeypot and Dracula ants? Those are from the American Southwest and Madagascar, respectively. I guess they wouldn't stand a chance where he lives and he was only keeping a small number. Also, the original Dracula ant species is highly endangered :(

Now that I know what I know, when the season comes around again (Aug-Oct) when the termite mushrooms sprout, I will definitely check all the mounds on my property for the mushrooms! I can't wait!

Oh, how interestig!!! Perhaps that could be it!

but if that is the case, can you have the same result adding nitrogen to the soil in an artficial way?

Yes, I was wondering about artificial options like nitrogen/fertilizer spikes. But I'm pretty sure nitrogen is part of the puzzle. This is part of the reason that, in the middle of a drought, you can irrigate all you want, but you still won't get the results you would have if you had regular storms. Which makes me wonder about artificial means. Most likely, it would work, but it might not produce the same results in nature. I think about aquarium keeping. Freshwater aquascapers supplement CO2 to help encourage plant growth. Reef keepers have to supplement all kinds of nutrients and other things to keep corals healthy and growing. We have found artificial ways of mimicking nature, but it's still not quite the same results as you find in nature itself.

All of this idea are great but won't birds Attack on the mounds or eat the termites foraging?

@@velarde3412 I was wondering about that. That's a question for antscanada to answer.

I can see this possibly working on an industrial scale and it would be a much better way to include the insect world in our food supply system rather than constantly spraying them with stuff that then poisons us.

It would be great to be able to use a symbiotic method in order to boost the result. I can feel that the topic at hand here won't just be for mushroom, but also other type of fungus/plant

Thank you so much! Ant/termite love forever!

@@AntsCanada No, THANK YOU! My daughter was anti-ALL-things-insect. We watch your channel and now I’ll find her crouched down intently watching insect life! She will even relocate any indoor insects outside. You’ve helped change her perspective ❤️

This is the most wholesome comment i have ever seen 🥲

no sound on the vid

What happens to the green empire???

4th reply

Where’s the Phönix empire

Rooting for A, but D is my favourite, I love their dome!

sounds like a good topic to research. I always feel that colony insects may have something we don't know that are great for "house-keeping" their colony.

This always happens! I feel so lucky!

This is really interesting! Thank you for sharing!

It's the elections in the Air

Lmao tarantulas aren't as dangerous either less dangerous sometimes. There's some very calm ones from videos I've seen

There's a whole movie about this and it does not go well for the ants. It's called....ANTS.

The recap is because he posts weekly and you can forget alot in a week.But if your binge watching it can be a little annoying

"as I'm catching up" yeah that's why the recap is there haha so wherever you pick up, you can figure out what's going on!

@@anonymouse9833 thank you for repeating the same thing the guy before you said but differently. It really sticks in the repetition!

@@betzology6711 just reminds me of DragonballZ. Ten minutes recap that wasn't needed. Ten minutes of actual footage. Then seeing the same footage over and over. Don't get me wrong I love seeing everything antscanada does! That's why I can't watch it every episode that gets released that day. It's the same crap I watched last weekend and then the same ten minutes of something I'll watch next weekend.

Terminators 2.0 sounds cool

@@sirtopoftheworldegg the OG termite colony antscanada had its name was “the terminators”. So that’s why I had terminators 2.0 in the names

Thank you! Ant love forever!

@@AntsCanada Yes, I have missed the long Saturday videos, and am happy to see them returning now the Ant House is done. Loving these termites.🖤🇨🇦

Thank you! Ant/termite love forever!

🤣🤣🤣 You caught it!!!

he can also rinse everything he collects and bake it for half an hour at 250f to disinfect/clean the substrates and detritus, but I'd only do that for leaves and bits collected on his own property, just forgo collection from roadways and other land altogether.

@@appalachiabrauchfrau Would that not kill off all the spores he's trying to collect though? He's probably safe if its from his own yard, anywhere else would need to be sanitized, defeating the purpose (unless he wants it for decoration only).

​@@LuthienNightwolf yea it would lmao

🤣🤣🤣 I did feel really bad afterward. I think I got a little too excited in the moment as it was quite a shock, and I took way more than I really needed.

@@AntsCanada Im surprised you didnt add more of the fungle comb to the new colonies

So cute right?

That's what AntsCanada do

He makes things interesting

He's got acres of land with termites, ants, snakes, lizards etc. Not that hard to believe

do i need to list the names of ant colonies that had mites

@@Joshuajacobson95 Golden Empire?

@@Joshuajacobson95 fire nation?

Ikr?! Same! Thank you for watching! Ant/termite love forever!

Ant/Termite love forever

OMG YES!!! I SWEAR!!! In fact, I wasn't even planning on filming the collection of clay soil but as soon as I turned over the first layer of soil, I couldn't believe how I had struck gold! I mean, it was no wonder it was a bare patch of soil with no grass on it. Beneath it was an active middle-aged termite nest! I filmed the fungus chamber with my cell phone, hence the poor quality of that shot!

Woww! I'm in amazement of your luck!

@@AntsCanada Hmm ok kinda sus but ok, i guess you either got extremely lucky or i am greatly underestimating the amount of macrotermes in the area.

@@CMZneu I mean..it's the perfect soil for termites, so naturally there would be a chance of them beeing there. Honestly it's more lucky that they didn't got damaged on accident.

He's got acres of yard with termite mounds, what's hard to believe?

No dude, that's mold, and scientist don't understand it, and AC will be the first in the world to discover the secret behind it! /s

hey AntsCanada do you know what song was 22:18 from? I hear it from movie recap videos and I never got to know where it's from.

I think they might but I don't know where to get hypoaspis mites! I need to find rhino beetles!

Yes, bees are definitely on my bucketlist! I am just in the landscaping and planting stage of the flowering plants around my home first so the bees have flowers to visit! In terms of aquatic eusocial creatures I did hear that there is a eusocial shrimp species. Not sure.

@@AntsCanada Oh yeah, Google has some results for some eusocial shrimp. Doesn't seem like a lot, and could be tricky to get your hands on, but could be an interesting thing to try if nothing else.

Oh, possibly!

Might also have to do with negative ions, also produced by thunderstorms. Perhaps giving the water you add to the set-ups a negative charge might help.🖤🇨🇦