50 replies to this topic

[dominatus]

I've been doing ant things in real life and on the internet since the very late 90's, and only really got active online around 2003.  Antdude's Ant Farm Message Board was around for quite a few years by that point; I think it originated in the 90s but I don't know for sure. It was populated by some really smart people and actual Myrmecologists so if you did a decent job asking your question you could get some high quality answers.
 
Dermy's post largely covers a lot of the North American online ant stuff but it should be noted that there were actually a lot of really cool ant keeping websites up around the year 2000 or so with tutorials on how to build various kinds of formicariums.A lot of cool looking setups constructed primarily out of laboratory glassware that you don't see anymore because methods have developed beyond that, and its now not just scientists who are interested in keeping ants. There was even a website where someone was selling dyed plaster nests, wood frame nests, etc with a live webcam of a Camponotus colony. This person had all of their stuff for sale but I remember it being far more expensive than a lot of stuff available today. Around 2004 or so I remember visiting the German Ant Store website and they had a lot of really cool stuff. Their forums also had way more advanced setups than anything I've seen in the English speaking ant world until very recent years. The English speaking ant community was hilariously behind things being done in Europe and as far as I know may still be. 
 
But like a lot of the "early" internet, just about all of that old stuff is gone. It's been replaced by facebook groups, discords, and forums/blogs connected to companies selling ant keeping things.

Yeah and what's funny know is even forums and facebook are starting to get overthrown too.

How so? By what?

[Manitobant]

Antkeeping may have gotten more advanced in the past decade or so, but the hobby began in the 1950s when milton Levine made the first ant farm. Although it didn't contain a queen and wasn't very advanced, it paved the way for the future of the hobby. If only he was still around to see what has become of it. rest in peace.

[FSTP]

Antkeeping may have gotten more advanced in the past decade or so, but the hobby began in the 1950s when milton Levine made the first ant farm. Although it didn't contain a queen and wasn't very advanced, it paved the way for the future of the hobby. If only he was still around to see what has become of it. rest in peace.

 

 

actually even before that I have a book from 1917 on hymenoptera that details how to make a rudementary ant nest out of panes of glass. And I would not be surpised if that's not even the earliest, just the earliest depiction of ant keeping in my ant books colection.

[ponerinecat]

I notice that most hobbies end up like this. You've got a relatively nice, small community with a lot of diversity in the way the hobby is executed. Then, it blows up and becomes extremely popular, with everyone wanting to follow the example of on or two people. And with Mikey Bustos, the majority of his videos aren't even ant videos anymore. And if they are, it's a thirty minute dramatization of common antkeeping problems or a claim to a new discovery. This makes the people who look up to Mikey believe that ants are a largely undiscovered subject, and makes them follow in Mikey's footsteps even more.

[Unfrozen]

since i was a baby i was interested in ants and when i was 8 i was trying to identify queens i cought but i didn't understand infertility and i incorrectly id them

[ANTdrew]

Very fascinating posts here. All niche hobbies follow this arc I guess. It reminds me a lot of how skateboarding went from an underground activity to really blowing up in the late ‘90s.
Things will really change for ant keeping now thst folks can just Google and find Pogonomyrmex queens for sale.

[Serafine]

Very fascinating posts here. All niche hobbies follow this arc I guess. It reminds me a lot of how skateboarding went from an underground activity to really blowing up in the late ‘90s.
Things will really change for ant keeping now thst folks can just Google and find Pogonomyrmex queens for sale.

I wouldn't expect antkeeping to blow up into the next mainstream thing. It'll still be a niche hobby within a niche hobby (terraristics).

Antkeeping has been around for decades in Europe (in fact the Antstore is over 20 years old and people were keeping ants even before it opened) and it still doesn't even play a minor role in the terraristics economy.

Seeing anything antkeeping-related on a any terraristics convention (where they sell tons of lizards, geckos, tarantulas, etc.) is still a huge exception.
 

 

 

I've been doing ant things in real life and on the internet since the very late 90's, and only really got active online around 2003.  Antdude's Ant Farm Message Board was around for quite a few years by that point; I think it originated in the 90s but I don't know for sure. It was populated by some really smart people and actual Myrmecologists so if you did a decent job asking your question you could get some high quality answers.
 
Dermy's post largely covers a lot of the North American online ant stuff but it should be noted that there were actually a lot of really cool ant keeping websites up around the year 2000 or so with tutorials on how to build various kinds of formicariums.A lot of cool looking setups constructed primarily out of laboratory glassware that you don't see anymore because methods have developed beyond that, and its now not just scientists who are interested in keeping ants. There was even a website where someone was selling dyed plaster nests, wood frame nests, etc with a live webcam of a Camponotus colony. This person had all of their stuff for sale but I remember it being far more expensive than a lot of stuff available today. Around 2004 or so I remember visiting the German Ant Store website and they had a lot of really cool stuff. Their forums also had way more advanced setups than anything I've seen in the English speaking ant world until very recent years. The English speaking ant community was hilariously behind things being done in Europe and as far as I know may still be. 
 
But like a lot of the "early" internet, just about all of that old stuff is gone. It's been replaced by facebook groups, discords, and forums/blogs connected to companies selling ant keeping things.

Yeah and what's funny know is even forums and facebook are starting to get overthrown too.

 

How so? By what?

 

Facebook is actively purging petkeeping groups (even the large ones with 50k+ members) in their effort to crack down on live pet sales (which are forbidden in Facebook's ToS) - although it has to be said that the Facebook antkeeping groups brought this onto themselves considering how most group admins and staff gave less than a crap about the buckets of ants being illegally sold through their groups. It's a pretty well known thing that many FB antkeeping groups are little more than illegal trading hubs for exotic ants.
 
Forums are slowly getting replaced by more interactive platforms like Discord and other social media clients, which also is partially the forums' own faults. There are things that chat platforms like Discord just can't do and there are things that forums just can't do - both of them working in tandem would make for an amazing experience as they complement each other perfectly but nobody has tried this so far, in fact most forum communities are either completely ignorant or openly hostile towards these new platforms and the possibilities they bring with them.

Edited by Serafine, August 18 2019 - 1:52 AM.

[ANTdrew]

Follow up questions:
1) who invented the test tube set up? That seems like one of the biggest breakthroughs in ant keeping history.
2) Do you think EO Wilson has ever visited formiculture.com?

[Antennal_Scrobe]

This thread really exploded!

[Canadant]

If only I had Google and the internet when I was a boy in the 80's. I was always catching critters and observing them. But now with Google and the wealth of shared information I've really been able to step it up.

Ant keeping has been a welcome hobby in my life. I'm a 43 year old man and I could care less about what people think of me ( it's only with nature I feel this way) running around with nets, pill bottles and magnifying glass. Lol.

God, I went back to keeping fish about 10 years ago. When I was a boy I kept fish and just loved to watch them but they were always so sickly. Now I've learned all about the nitrogen cycle etc. My second attempt at keeping fish was so successful.

I'm raising monarchs now and have 10 chrysalis at the moment. I say I do it for my two daughters ( which I do) but it's really for me!

Love this site!

Canadant

PS. I was going to make a thread about people like us. I've never had many friends but none of them were like me. I'm a die hard nature nut! People like me are so hard to find. As a matter of fact I've only met one like me. My grade 5 teacher. I've recently met him after many decades and we always talk nature shop when together.

[Canadian anter]

Man I think I joined right before the start of the AC boom. At the time we stl had generally fairly high quality answers AKA batspiderfish. To me, I felt that this was the best fine for me as an antkeeper, because the relative slow growth made everyone way more welcome to beginners than what happens now, and there weren't enough complete beginners for much hostility to form

I personally was only a year or two into antkeeping at the time when the AC boom actually started, and as DERMY said there were a bunch of ID posts that didn't follow the format, a lot of questions repeated over and over again by beginners who hadn't done any research or even read the pinned subjects at the top of each subforum. I think although antkeeping grew in numbers by tenfold, the quality disproportionately dropped as more and more newbies came but more and more experienced antkeepers decided to stay away from forums.

I think AntsCanada has overall made a huge impact by the number of new antkeepers that have joined, but as DERMY mentioned there was also the phase of "I need a huge colony of fire ants" which I see even today. Even now, as a vendor I still get a ton of requests for fire ants, black crazy ants, and yellow crazy ants from keepers who ONLY want to keep exciting invasives.

Around a year later in 2017 I actually observed a few breaks of "better antkeeping" as some of the newer antkeepers had ventured into different ants (Acanthomyops Lasius particularly was raised several times in a short timespan)

We also had a few very heated "shipping ants over state lines" and "keeping army ants" debates, the first of which established a very anti-exotic tone in this forum and the second of which was later probably broken when PurdueEntomology successfully maintained a Neivamyrmex colony using Solenopsis brood (finally a good use for fire ants!)

It has also been brought to my attention that several echo-chamber-ant keeping areas were running rampant at this time, who did not the knowledge from the interjections of those who had actually done research, and I feel this is solely for the antkeeping in North America, but I often still meet "antkeeping nuts" with almost conspiratorial beliefs on antkeeping such as "there are populations of wild Carebara in Southern Ontario" and who, instead of having had the Yuku perspective of "well it's a queen, ask Dr Ant", were more "Yeah one petiole node means it's a ponerine"

I was overall more absent during the early part of 2019, but I feel that a main difference now is a very stark rise in the number of people who sell ants and formicaria, and the recent change in law has created the start of what I would consider a "Pogonomyrmex occidentalis craze" held back only by the extremely exhorbitant prices at which they sell. I can only hope this evens out as time goes on.

[ANTdrew]

If only I had Google and the internet when I was a boy in the 80's. I was always catching critters and observing them. But now with Google and the wealth of shared information I've really been able to step it up.

Ant keeping has been a welcome hobby in my life. I'm a 43 year old man and I could care less about what people think of me ( it's only with nature I feel this way) running around with nets, pill bottles and magnifying glass. Lol.

God, I went back to keeping fish about 10 years ago. When I was a boy I kept fish and just loved to watch them but they were always so sickly. Now I've learned all about the nitrogen cycle etc. My second attempt at keeping fish was so successful.

I'm raising monarchs now and have 10 chrysalis at the moment. I say I do it for my two daughters ( which I do) but it's really for me!

Love this site!

Canadant

PS. I was going to make a thread about people like us. I've never had many friends but none of them were like me. I'm a die hard nature nut! People like me are so hard to find. As a matter of fact I've only met one like me. My grade 5 teacher. I've recently met him after many decades and we always talk nature shop when together.

I love this. I’m like you, brother, just a tad younger. Welcome to the madness.

[ponerinecat]

 

If only I had Google and the internet when I was a boy in the 80's. I was always catching critters and observing them. But now with Google and the wealth of shared information I've really been able to step it up.

Ant keeping has been a welcome hobby in my life. I'm a 43 year old man and I could care less about what people think of me ( it's only with nature I feel this way) running around with nets, pill bottles and magnifying glass. Lol.

God, I went back to keeping fish about 10 years ago. When I was a boy I kept fish and just loved to watch them but they were always so sickly. Now I've learned all about the nitrogen cycle etc. My second attempt at keeping fish was so successful.

I'm raising monarchs now and have 10 chrysalis at the moment. I say I do it for my two daughters ( which I do) but it's really for me!

Love this site!

Canadant

PS. I was going to make a thread about people like us. I've never had many friends but none of them were like me. I'm a die hard nature nut! People like me are so hard to find. As a matter of fact I've only met one like me. My grade 5 teacher. I've recently met him after many decades and we always talk nature shop when together.

I love this. I’m like you, brother, just a tad younger. Welcome to the madness.

 

Same here, much younger. Can't keep carnivores or collect specimens, so I have to make myself content with herbivores.

[NickAnter]

If only I had Google and the internet when I was a boy in the 80's. I was always catching critters and observing them. But now with Google and the wealth of shared information I've really been able to step it up.
Ant keeping has been a welcome hobby in my life. I'm a 43 year old man and I could care less about what people think of me ( it's only with nature I feel this way) running around with nets, pill bottles and magnifying glass. Lol.
God, I went back to keeping fish about 10 years ago. When I was a boy I kept fish and just loved to watch them but they were always so sickly. Now I've learned all about the nitrogen cycle etc. My second attempt at keeping fish was so successful.
I'm raising monarchs now and have 10 chrysalis at the moment. I say I do it for my two daughters ( which I do) but it's really for me!
Love this site!
Canadant
PS. I was going to make a thread about people like us. I've never had many friends but none of them were like me. I'm a die hard nature nut! People like me are so hard to find. As a matter of fact I've only met one like me. My grade 5 teacher. I've recently met him after many decades and we always talk nature shop when together.

I love this. I’m like you, brother, just a tad younger. Welcome to the madness.

Same here, much younger. Can't keep carnivores or collect specimens, so I have to make myself content with herbivores.

You could keep, in theory, Pogonomyrmex then. They do not, to my knowledge, need insects. All they need is seeds and water.

[ponerinecat]

 

 

 

If only I had Google and the internet when I was a boy in the 80's. I was always catching critters and observing them. But now with Google and the wealth of shared information I've really been able to step it up.
Ant keeping has been a welcome hobby in my life. I'm a 43 year old man and I could care less about what people think of me ( it's only with nature I feel this way) running around with nets, pill bottles and magnifying glass. Lol.
God, I went back to keeping fish about 10 years ago. When I was a boy I kept fish and just loved to watch them but they were always so sickly. Now I've learned all about the nitrogen cycle etc. My second attempt at keeping fish was so successful.
I'm raising monarchs now and have 10 chrysalis at the moment. I say I do it for my two daughters ( which I do) but it's really for me!
Love this site!
Canadant
PS. I was going to make a thread about people like us. I've never had many friends but none of them were like me. I'm a die hard nature nut! People like me are so hard to find. As a matter of fact I've only met one like me. My grade 5 teacher. I've recently met him after many decades and we always talk nature shop when together.

I love this. I’m like you, brother, just a tad younger. Welcome to the madness.

Same here, much younger. Can't keep carnivores or collect specimens, so I have to make myself content with herbivores.

You could keep, in theory, Pogonomyrmex then. They do not, to my knowledge, need insects. All they need is seeds and water.

 

That's a good point. I can keep seed eating species. Thanks for the loophole!

[NickAnter]

No problem. I am glad that you can still keep ants, as everyone on here should. Also, an herbivore recomedation: guinea pigs. They are super funny, and talkative.

[TennesseeAnts]

Acromyrmex could also be done, @ponerinecat.

[NickAnter]

Good idea Antdude. They are just a little hard to come by.

[ANTdrew]

I was thinking the same thing yesterday. Get a seed eating or fungus growing ant, and you’re good to go.

[ponerinecat]

I know about some cyphomyrmex nearby, just a little hesitant to try, and I don't know when they fly.