Check out this YouTube video from House of the Dragon for Ant Wars

At the moment, House of the Dragon Fans are preparing for a season full of intrigue, violence and betrayal.

And me too, because I observe A YouTuber built a 1,000-gallon vivarium full of hostile ant colonies.

For the past six months, Mikey Bustos, who goes by AntsCanada, has been promoting biodiversity in a 12-foot-long vivarium at his home in the Philippines. The latest addition is a 6-inch-long baby caiman, which he plans to eventually relocate to a separate swamp vivarium and then to his backyard. The ethical and legal aspects of this action are unclear to me, but it is a captivating sight nonetheless.

Bustos, who has long been what I guess I would call an ant YouTuber, uses a 4K camera to capture the inhabitants of the vivarium, a world he has named Pantdora. Yes, with a “t.” There are tree frogs, geckos, many species of ants, crickets, cockroaches, guppies, spiders, the aforementioned caiman, shrimp, and more.

IMAGE: AntsCanada

Over incredible high-definition footage of the creatures, Bustos narrates a clip, his voice strained with excitement. “Oh, I love it when fish gather in schools! There’s something beautiful and hypnotic about it!” he exclaims after releasing guppies into Pantdora’s blackwater tank, Aqua Noctis.

IMAGE: AntsCanada

A tree frog receives a similarly poetic introduction. “When I discovered her in Pantdora, I was overwhelmed by how beautiful she looked in the misty moonlight,” Bustos tells us. “I called her Miss Piggy.”

The rhythm of the videos drives me slightly mad. I’m pretty sure they’re made and tuned for children. The image quality is stunning, but they have the narrative simplicity and crazy rhythm of something like CoComelon, and Bustos’ narration is less reminiscent of David Attenborough and more like Dora the Explorer.

But the drama. Oh, the drama.

IMAGE: AntsCanada

At the beginning of the series, Bustos notices that several ant colonies have accidentally landed in Pantdora after hiding in a giant salvaged tree stump and soil from his garden. He is thrilled to see a vibrant colony of marauding ants – but wait, what is this?

Two invasive ant species have also settled in the vivarium: fire ants and black crazy ants.

A brief, bloody battle between the Marauders and the Fire Ants ends in casualties: Bustos watches sadly as a Marauder Major dies in combat with a Fire Ant. The surviving Marauders bury the bodies while the Fire Ants retreat into their tunnels, presumably to reproduce and increase their numbers.

But the black crazy ants seem to coexist with the marauding ants in the tree stump (officially called the Hallelujah stump). Until one day.

Hundreds of black crazy ants – with multiple queens – pour out of the stump, carrying eggs and moving the colony from the middle of the stump to the top. Bustos realizes that there may be a war going on in the stump between the crazy ants and the marauders – who have not been so numerous lately. In addition, the crazy ants have somehow infiltrated the hardened fecal tunnels of a termite colony that shares the Hallelujah stump! Can the colony survive? Or have the king and queen and their precious eggs been killed?

As Bustos says, “Mother Nature is just breathtaking, isn’t she?”

I can’t wait to find out what happens in the ant war. Or what devastation the new praying mantis will cause. Or what will happen after Bustos’ giant crab spider Lady Deathstrike – along with her egg sac – is introduced into the ecosystem.

IMAGE: AntsCanada

The thing is, despite the over-the-top voiceover, I really believe in Bustos’ enthusiasm for his creatures. When he rants about a young grasshopper crawling up a vine and praises it for moving slowly so predators (like the tree frogs Kermit and Miss Piggy) don’t see it, I get it! It’s pretty cool, and I’ve never been so immersed in the complicated and dangerous lives of insects.

I’m not sure how many other adults can stomach the childish narrative of Bustos’ videos. And I’m not sure how many other adults will be captivated by watching two giant crab spiders having sex in stunning 4K. But I need to know what happens next in Pantdora, and I’m going to tune in.