Goons Are Great posted:

In preparation for winter I had to remove the tubes connecting the first and the second outworld and by doing so I removed a small stone I offer water in. Underneath, again, I found another, newly constructed satellite nest my ants had built, full of larvae. I'm not sure why they do this for the larvae - pupae would make sense since it's a lot less humid there than in the nest and pupae don't like it too humid - but they've proven time and time again and they will take this satellite nest no matter what I try to do to convince them otherwise. The only explanation I have is that they have problems keeping the larvae from eating eggs and pupae - a common problem for all ant species, the larvae are blind and will try to eat literally everything in range of their mouths - and so they want to play safe.

Either way, by opening it up, I triggered full alarm, needed to distract them by using an attacking cricket to draw their attention away and then remove the tube next to the satellite nest. In there, I got a unique photo of this super cute ant:


A white ant!

This species is always very dark brown to deep black, so this is a special sight. It is, however, not an albino ant or something, it's actually a freshly hatched baby ant. She must have hatched from her cocoon a few hours ago, probably in the morning 4 to 7 hours ago. Her exoskeleton is not yet hardened and very very soft and vulnerable, it takes around 8 to 12 hours for it to harden fully, turning black. Usually these babies never, ever leave the nest as they are so vulnerable to everything, and due to the very short duration they look like this, it is extraordinarily rare to see one.

Poor little girl was completely lost, her antennae cannot smell very well yet as that, too, needs some time to harden and adjust. Also she is very sensitive to light, so she just stumbled across, helplessly looking for her sisters to lead the way. That did happen after a few seconds, another ant came by, grabbed her antenna with her mandible, and carefully led the way towards the nest.
In a few hours she'll be all black and fully functional, then she can tell the others her exciting story of how she got lost during complete chaos and thought the world has vanished around her.