25 replies to this topic

[AntaholicAnonymous]

All of us here are interested in ants and I wanna now how that came to be or the first time you realized how amazing ants are and maybe even what your first species was.

[Ferox_Formicae]

I watched an AntsCanada video. The first ant I ever collected was a Camponotus nearcticus alate, who later ended up escaping into my room, never to be seen again.

[AntaholicAnonymous]

I'll start.

When I was around 6 years old I was fascinated by spiders and everyone called me Spiderman in my neighborhood. lol

I even had groups of people watching me handling them and putting them on my face and I helped them with handling a spider for the first time.

I fed my spiders mostly with ants and I wanted to keep a supply at home so I decided to put some sand in a glass container and I put in like 40 workers.

As ants do they started digging and I remember watching them for hours on end just digging out tunnels. I was completely blown away from what I saw.
I thought OK it's time to put in a spider that would kill them all.

As you might expect that didn't go as planned and my favorite spider at the time got ripped into pieces and carried under ground. That moment of shock and amazement flipped the switch in my head that would later make me into an ant keeper.


And it was a manica rubida colony that did that. Took me a long time to figure out what exact species that was but now I have a colony of my own.

[AntaholicAnonymous]

I watched an AntsCanada video. The first ant I ever collected was a Camponotus nearcticus alate, who later ended up escaping into my room, never to be seen again.

I almost forgot about ants and then a couple years ago I've seen ants Canada for the first time too.
I had my first terrarium set up the same weekend. lol

Edited by AntaholicAnonymous, March 2 2020 - 7:12 AM.

[OhNoNotAgain]

The exact circumstance is lost in the fog of decades-old history, but I always liked watching ants as a kid, and I know at one point I got a cool toy formicarium, I THINK as a "freebie" that came along with a Japanese kids' magazine. But my ants were in the Midwest USA. I also kept ants in dirt jars. When I got older I kept ants in an Uncle Milton. I can't remember how many colonies I started by capturing queens - maybe 2 or 3 - and I did keep at least one for a few months in the Uncle Milton. It would've helped a lot if the Internet as we know it existed back then, but it didn't, and I accidentally killed off my colonies through neglect or stupid mistakes.

 

I got back into ant keeping ("oh no, not again") last year after successfully not killing off some isopod colonies and realizing I could buy California-native queens off people at this site. Otherwise I had been resigned to being stuck in Argentine la la land.

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, March 2 2020 - 9:46 AM.

[Manitobant]

I got into antkeeping because antscanada vids randomly appeared in my YouTube recommendations. Stuff like this makes me believe a god exists...

[Broncos]

I've always been into spiders and other random insects but my love for ants quickly overcame my love for spiders in 2016. Thanks to antscanada videos.

[TennesseeAnts]

I watched an Ants Australia (now AusAnts) in 2015 and kept a few queenless colonies, then in mid 2016 I found a Formica pacifica queen. I still have the queen, and she has a thriving colony of about 2.8k.

[PogoQueen]

8 years ago I noticed these huge colonies all around my house with beautiful bright red, large ants. I wondered what kind they were as I had never seen anything like them before. I joined another forum similar to this one and identified them. Pogonomyrmex californicus! I’ve loved ants ever since.

[ANTdrew]

I've loved insects since I was a little kid. I was brought back to my first love of insects through my native plant garden. At first, I was focused mostly on bees and wasps. A couple of amazing books including EO Wilson's Journey to the Ants really intrigued me. There is a section in the back of the book with some tips on keeping ants. Reading that first planted the seed in my mind. I started researching different websites and eventually found all the amazing ant channels on YouTube. AntsCanada and Ants Australia had a big impact on me. I learned how to find queens and eventually found two Tetramorium immigrans queens in June 2018, both of which I still have.

[AntaholicAnonymous]

Seems like most of us got great inspiration from ant youtubers.

I think there's definetly room for more quality ant content. I gonna give it a shot as soon as I'm able to.

I think a series on some of the ant journals on here could be awesome if done the right way. We will see

[Whitelotus]

My parents purchased a gel ant farm as a Christmas gift one year as a child. I was not interested in ants at first but after a bit of failure trying to understand how to raise a colony as a child, my interest in them grew. AntsCanada secured Ant-keeping as my favorite hobby. 

[TheMicroPlanet]

AntsCanada had a pretty big influence on my fascination with the hobby, but that's not what started it. Before I started considering antkeeping, I was intrigued by the concept of a so-called "superorganism" (basically, a collection of individual organisms that function collectively as a single organism), as in colonial cnidarians, termites, and of course, ants. I saw superorganisms as models for a perfect or near-perfect society, and I was amazed at how well the inividuals within the superorganism cooperated with eachother. But then I looked back at humanity and thought "Man, this is a complete mess!". So that's why I wanted to begin antkeeping: to see if there was anything we, humanity, could learn from the ants. That one author from Proverbs wasn't kidding when he said "Look to the ant, you sluggard. Consider its ways and be wise!".

[Ants_Dakota]

Just like my verse! Solomon was a truly wise man. I first got into ants while at a park. I have always loved plants and other insects since kindergarten. I noticed these mounds, and, out of curiosity, began to flip them over. Formica ants poured out. It was around July and they had been storing their queen pupa in these warm mounds heated by the sun. Needless to say, i began collecting them from that day on. i was never really into antscanada until maybe about 5 months later, when i was surfing the internet for info on ants, and i came to his home site. I enjoyed his videos on ants for a while, but I soon realized that they didn't contain the info that i wanted to know about my ants, so i drifted away from them. However, he did inspire me to begin to think about starting a business about ants(i am still working on that one, hence my name) Hopefully it will develop soon!

[LaTun]

I got into Antkeeping by accident.
I was researching something about ants for a school project and then found out that you can actually keep ants. And was instantly hooked.
So I started researching, eventually found Antstore and then caught my first Queen (Lasius niger). I kept until 2000-3000 workers, then my family sadly had to move and I had to sell all my colonies.

[Manitobant]

I got into Antkeeping by accident.
I was researching something about ants for a school project and then found out that you can actually keep ants. And was instantly hooked.
So I started researching, eventually found Antstore and then caught my first Queen (Lasius niger). I kept until 2000-3000 workers, then my family sadly had to move and I had to sell all my colonies.

you know you can legally transport ants through countries and states in Europe right?

[AntsDakota]

Maybe they didn’t want to haul huge 2-3 thousand worker colony setups across who knows what distance?

[ponerinecat]

(Air Conditioner + Ants Australia) * Initial love of insects ^ Antwiki

[B_rad0806]

Ever since I was very young I have been interested in insects. I'd go out trying to catch praying mantis and other bugs. That has stayed with me ever since. About 4 years ago I watched this AC video and I was interested. that's how I started ant keeping 

[Thunder_Birds]

Well, for me, Ants_Dakota, AntsDakota, and I went to school together, and they showed me about ants. In the summer, after the school year was over, I found my first ant queen, which I still have today (Is is a Camponotus Pennsylvanicus colony). So yeah, that’s how it all started with the ant thing. But, I have kept insects for most of my life.