1,000 Ants vs. Black Widow

If 1,000 ants had to fight a black widow, what would actually happen? Would the spider's venom come out on top or would the sheer number of ants overwhelm her? Well, in this video, I'm going to test ants against that and tons of other interesting scenarios to see how strong ants really are. The only problem is I don't have 1,000 ants. Thankfully, I found this website that sells just that. And the coolest thing is it's a mystery species, meaning we might actually get something really good. $300. Let's just add this to the cart. And I bought the most expensive shipping option to make sure the ants would arrive without any dying during the shipping. Oh, I am so excited. As long as I got to get species, it's going to be so fun to watch these go against a black widow and everything else I have planned for them. Anyways, I brought them to the recording area and opened up the package. And I was kind of surprised by what I found. Now, are they in here? Oh, my gosh. OK, there actually is like 1,000. OK, at least I didn't get scammed. Since they were in a pill bottle, I couldn't really get a good look at them. So I got a clear container and dumped them all inside. Instantly, you could now see the true scale of what 1,000 ants actually looks like. And at least I mean, I think it's 1,000. I'm not counting all these guys. And after analyzing the species, I realized that these were harvester ants, which are equipped with venomous stingers and massive mandibles. Meaning, yes, this was actually going to be a very interesting video with everything I was going to test. Now, for these 1,000 ants to be able to fight a black widow, we first need to get them in a nest. And well, everyone say hello to the Terra Jar. It's like Terra Green, except I replaced the green with a jar. Anyways, let me go and dump all these guys in here. Be free, everyone. This is way bigger than that tiny pill bottle you were in. Right away, you could see the ants starting to move around on top of the soil. Now, you might be thinking that this isn't enough space for the ants. Well, it actually is because this is specifically designed for the ants to dig out tunnels all along the sides of the glass. And as the video progresses, we're going to see their nest get crazier and crazier. And yeah, most of the ants were kind of going crazy, trying to climb up the glass. But after leaving them alone for only a few hours, you could see they were already starting to construct their tunnel system. Each of the worker ants would pick up singular grains of sand from the tunnels, walk up to the surface, drop the sand, and go back down to repeat the process. And when you have 1,000 ants, you can see they dig out a pretty good amount in only just an hour of this time-lapse footage. Oh yeah, it's sick to see the ants already starting to build their nest. And it should be fully dug out by the end of the video. Anyways, as you know, I'll be putting these guys to the test against a black widow. But before then, I have all of these different training activities to prepare the ants for the final spider boss. And second up, we're going to see how fast they can take down some prey. Yep, we've got a cricket. Oh my gosh, crickets hate me. And sorry, buddy, you are going to be, well, I guess you guys want to see what's about to happen. And well, right after dropping the cricket in, literally within like a nanosecond, the ants were swarming it. I thought it would only take like a couple minutes, but no, this cricket was already pinned down, getting venom injected into him. As I said earlier, each of these ants is equipped with a venomous stinger. That is obviously not super deadly to humans, but the crickets, when there's like 20 ants repeatedly stinging you, you're kind of done for. Yep, ants don't play around when there's a threat near their nest. And you can see over the next 30 minutes, the cricket stayed completely surrounded by the ants. And I'm guessing they already started to rip its antennas off and stuff to get a tasty meal to spread with the rest of the colony. Dang, that was cool to watch. Anyways, it's getting late. So I think I'm going to go and put this bucket on top of the ants. So it's dark for them. I'm going to go to sleep. And hopefully when I wake up, there's going to be tons more tunnels. Anyways, yeah, I'll see you guys in the morning. And over those next 10 hours, the ants made their tunnels so much larger and more intricate than before. And on the back, they even had tunnels all the way down at the bottom with ants actively walking about the whole system. Anyway, ants, it's 8am and that means it's time. As you can see, the alarm's going off. It's time for challenge number three. Let's get these ants trained even more. For this training, I have to pick up one unlucky ant and transport him to the ant lion pit. If you don't know what an ant lion is, well, this is it. It's just a tiny little bug that has actually evolved over millions of years to be an expert at taking down ants. Basically, when you go and put them on the floor, they start to dig themselves under the ground and then they just go around digging. And I have nine more of these guys, which I spread across the whole tank. And as you can see, they all dig around making these little lines in the ground. But after waiting a few hours, you can see that each of the ant lions had actually dug out their own little pits in the ground. And when an ant walks into the bottom of them, they're basically cooked. All right, ant, I'm going to put you right at the start. And at the end, I'm going to put some bread crumbs so you can bring back to the colony if you survive this. And without further ado, I let the ant loose. Let's see if he can get the bread to feed the colony. Immediately, he started to explore around the sand area. He had no idea that he was constantly walking near these pits of death. And eventually, he took a wrong step and stumbled inside of one. These pits are specifically designed to make the ants trip into them. But the ant lion at the bottom must have been sleeping or something because nothing happened and the ant was just able to walk out. But if you look closely, this caused the ant lion to wake up. He was now active and armed, with his mandibles now throwing up sand in case the ant walked in again. And over the next few minutes, the ant did just that. He kept walking inside of the pit, but the ant lion just could never quite snap on the ant at the right time. Well, that was until this. You see, this is paused footage. But basically, if we unpause it, you can see exactly what happens when an ant lion gets a hold of the ants. The ant lion started to bring the ant underground. And within a few seconds, it was like there was never anything even here. I thought it was over. And you could tell by the sand moving that the ant was getting pulled further and further underground. But all of a sudden, I saw this. A little bit of the ant's head had poked out of the ground. He somehow was fighting back and must have been using its stinger to try and escape. I immediately rushed back and recorded with my other camera. And what I saw was so weird. The ant had somehow made it out from under the sand, but it wasn't trying to escape. In fact, it was using its front legs to try and dig back under the ground. Bro, what the heck? Why is this ant digging like a dog? He's literally using his front legs to dig in the sand where he almost just got killed. Bro, this guy's crazy. Nah, bro. If you want to be eaten by an ant lion that bad, I will gladly put you right there. Have fun, buddy. And right after putting him in this pit, this ant lion also woke up and eventually snapped at the ant. And it once again started to pull him underground. But miraculously, this ant was able to fight back once again and somehow broke free, immediately ran out of the hole and straight over to the breadcrumbs to claim his prize. Nah, this ant shirked me to have me move him closer to the bread. And now he somehow won the challenge. Nah, bro, there is something up with these ants. I'm being dead serious. How on earth did he escape the ant lion over here? And how on earth did he escape this one and then know to go to the bread? And now he's trying to bring bread back to the colony. Bro, well played. You survived. I'll bring you and all the bread back to the colony. So I brought it all over to the nest and the entire colony was clearly super excited because they all swarmed the bread and started taking little pieces of it underground. Anyways, I went and waited a few hours and came back to find the nest even bigger once again. The ants still are not done with their training sessions. And next up, we got to see if they can survive some Venus fly traps for some food. So I immediately picked up some of the workers to bring them to the fly trap minefield, completely decked out with tons of Venus fly trap plants. For the food on this obstacle, we got a gorilla. I'm just kidding. I don't know why it's packaged in this. Basically what it is, it's just a bunch of oats. And I'm just going to feed these to the ants. Let's put them inside. You see, each Venus fly trap has these tiny little trigger hairs inside of them. And when something touches them, it causes them to close. And if I carefully put oats in between the hairs without hitting any of them, I can basically just put the food in here, which will make the ants have to carry them out. But it was actually pretty hard to get the oats perfectly inside. So I ended up just spreading the oats everywhere around the tank. All right, let's see how the ants do in here. I have a feeling they're not going to do too well, but yeah, we'll see. Immediately the ants had started to swarm out the tube that I'd put them in. And they were probably really confused of why they were all just transported away from their nest. And for a little while, they kind of just walked around investigating their new environment. That was until a couple minutes later where this first ant walked up to a Venus fly trap plants. He probably had no idea that these plants were basically alive and wanted to eat him whole. Thankfully though, this guy was able to walk out of the plants without triggering any of the traps. However, a few minutes later, this ant walked up to another one of the plants. And well, this time, all I'll say is he wasn't as lucky. Surprisingly, he wasn't super attracted to the oats, but it did seem like he may have been attracted to the traps themselves. You see, Venus fly traps create a very thin layer of nectar around the lip of the jaws to lure insects in. And eventually this ant ended up, well, walking into one, hitting a trigger here. And just like that, he was now stuck inside of the jaws. As you can see, the ant was just walking around inside, trying to escape. And he had no idea what to do. Too bad for this guy. This trap is going to release a type of acid over the next few days to basically just turn them into some nutrients to make the plant even stronger. Now, interestingly enough, pretty much all the ants I'd put inside were staying away from the traps and were all grouped up around this corner. In fact, they were actually starting the process of digging some more tunnels. Now these ants still think they're in the nest. They're just trying to dig. Well, I mean, I guess it's pretty smart if you're not getting eaten by the traps because over the next 20 minutes, only one single ant came across another Venus fly trap. This guy, let's call him Larry. Now, Larry is a daredevil because he was walking all over the jaws of all of these plants, absolutely risking it for the biscuit. But eventually Larry's luck ran out because of this happened. The jaw had closed on him, leaving half of his body stuck out of it. But this was actually pretty good for Larry because it means he had a chance to escape using all of his strength, which will be is not very much. He tried pushing himself out of the jaws, but the trap is designed to just get tighter and tighter as time goes on, meaning this ant was doomed. Well, not actually because I kind of felt bad for Larry. So I cheated nature and used my tweezers to open the trap. I safely got Larry out and brought him back to the colony. Anyways, that training actually went really well. Every single ant survived except one. So I brought them all back to the nest and gave the whole colony a bunch of these little gorilla oats to show my support. As you can see, it didn't take long for some of the ants to start moving the oats down to their intricate tunnel systems. And speaking of these tunnel systems, the last training session I'm putting these ants through before the black widow is a flood simulation. Yeah, I'm flooding this ant nest. Well, kind of, because if I actually flooded this thing, it would kill every single ant. So instead I've got this thing called the little dripper, which as you can see, drips some water droplets very slowly. Yeah, it might seem kind of lame, but this little bit of water should be enough to eventually collapse part of the ants tunnel system. And if it does collapse, if they can fix it quickly, it means they would have passed all my training missions. And that means they're ready for the black widow. So I immediately started to drop the little droplets of water. And initially the ants were very confused. Some of the droplets were hitting the ants and making them get completely drenched in water. But to my surprise, it almost seemed like the ants wanted to get wet because more and more of the ants started to gather around where the water was dropping. And eventually a whole pile of ants was getting completely soaked by it. You see ants are amazing in their ability to work as a team. And in the wild, if a real flood occurred, a massive ant colony would literally join together to make a raft out of their bodies. And that way the important stuff like the queen and eggs could stay on the top and stay dry to ensure the future of the colony. And on a mini scale, this is sort of what the ants are doing here. They're joining together to make a shield out of their bodies that will prevent the water from getting into the tunnels where all the eggs are stored. Wow. Ants are actually amazing. I was totally expecting these tunnels to just collapse from the water, but it seems like ants have literally evolved to do pretty much anything. I'll remove this water. I don't want to do any more harm. You guys proved to me you're very capable. They instantly took down the cricket, somehow escaped the ant lions, survived the Venus fly traps, and even survived a flood. And throughout that process, they managed to build an awesome nest with a thriving colony. It is safe to say these ants are ready for my black widow. Now this is actually my last black widow because all the other ones from my other videos have escaped. Yeah. Don't tell my mom. But anyways, I went and put the black widow in a container so you guys could get a good look at it. And as you can tell, it has that insane iconic red hourglass abdomen. Wait, uh, wait, sorry. This is my pet robot, black widow. Uh, this is not the real one. Um, here is the real black widow. As you can tell, it's extremely creepy and under it's a glossy black abdomen is where the red hourglass is located. These guys have an insane amount of venom. So if it even bites a single ant, it's safe to say it's going to be a goner. Anyways, here is the tank where the final battle will take place. I went and put a few sticks for my backyard. Then I put in the black widow. Immediately she started climbing all over the sticks and I went and waited a little while while she sort of settled in and found a nice spot to rest. Once she did, I went to the ant nest, scooped a good amount of the workers into a tube so we could get this battle started. Let's get these ants in here. Let the game begin. Immediately the ants started to run out of the tube and down onto the sand. When pretty much all of the ants had made it down to the sand, some started to make their way over to the black widow, which was just perched right above them on the sticks. But I'm not going to lie, I'm a pretty impatient guy and I couldn't bear to wait for the battle to start. So I literally picked up the stick myself to bring the spider down to the ants. Immediately the spider started to run around and none of the ants really noticed besides this guy. That kind of bit the spider's leg or something and scared it away. The spider tried to escape as fast as it could by climbing the glass, but it was too slick. Once a few other of the ants had noticed the black widow was on the ground, they started to jump it. And it was actually pretty funny to watch because as you can see, there's barely any ants and the spider was so scared, trying to run away at full speed. Bro, you're like the most venomous spider in the world. Why are you not just fighting back? And yeah, a couple of the ants just kind of continued to terrorize the black widow. But the thing is, all of the rest of the ants were kind of just doing their own thing at the other side of the enclosure. I had to make this more interesting. So I had a better plan. I went and picked up all of the ants to bring them back to the nest. All right, well, I got the black widow from the tank and hey, the title did say 1000 ants versus black widow. Let's actually put this to the test against 1000 ants. And well, I dropped the spider inside and it immediately started going crazy, running everywhere. And obviously the ants did not act kindly. Every single worker went on red alert mode and jumped onto the spider, grabbing her with their mandibles and repeatedly stinging it over and over. As you saw with the cricket, ants do not mess around with stuff in their nest. And to my surprise, the black widow did not even get a chance to fight back. It's actually pretty crazy how quickly the ants had pinned it down and started to devour it. And yeah, well, that's literally all that happened. And that should answer your question of who wins in a fight. 1000 ants definitely wins. And they basically beat everything. There's a reason why ants are the secret king of the animal kingdom, because there's quadrillions of ants around the world. One final thing, I have an important message to all the kids and families and parents watching out there, because the new Terra Green activity book was just released. Now CSD, we just released this book that we put so much time into to make it the most educational, fun experience ever. Everything can be colored and it's a journey that goes through all five different biomes. But not only are there so many tons of fun facts, but it has you test your creativity. Like on this page, you got to design the perfect habitat for a mudskipper. And then this one, you even get to design your own axolotl for each of those. I mean, I could talk about this for like 10 minutes, but if you just want to learn more, and if this sounds interesting to anyone out there watching, check it out on terragreenstore.com. There's some more information. Thank you so much for watching this video. And yeah, so over and out. Hey boy, who's a good boy? I know you guys just like seeing my doggie, so yeah, he's just kind of sleepy right now.