The Peruvian Amazon Rainforest is INCREDIBLE!

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]There exists a place known above all others for its beauty and its untamed wilderness.

[00:00:06]A place full of mystery and adventure.

[00:00:09]And I'm spending the next 10 days living deep within uncovering all of its mysteries and everything that it has to show.

[00:00:18]Welcome to the Amazon rainforest.

[00:00:31]But first we have to get there.

[00:00:34]Where we going?

[00:00:36]Fortnite season 8. No, we're going to gate F7, stupid.

[00:00:42]Duh.

[00:00:45]Mason, how much did you pay for your burger? $200. $200?

[00:00:50]Well, it must have been good cuz it's it's gone. Dude, you missed an arugula.

[00:00:54]It's worth $200.

[00:00:56]You paid like $18 for that arugula.

[00:00:58]>> [laughter] >> Angle, how much did you pay for your burger? 13 pennies. 13 pennies? Bro, I paid like $32 for my burger. What the 13 pennies.

[00:01:19]>> [music] [music] >> It took no time at all after arriving to the rainforest expedition headquarters in Puerto Maldonado, Peru to realize we're already in the rainforest.

[00:01:51]So, first ants of the trip is a Cephalotes atratus worker.

[00:01:59]Giant turtle ant and it sure is.

[00:02:04]Oh, this is your first time seeing like Cephalotes atratus, right? Yeah, I've seen Alpha Roy, which is the sister species.

[00:02:10]We were going to need to take a boat to get to the lodge we're staying at and what better way to kill time than look at some of the beautiful rainforest wildlife already present just here at the headquarters.

[00:02:21]>> This guy's talking [music] about the Cephalotes atratus and I'm over here just filming this stinking Eciton hamatum, Surely you guys want to see this stinking Eciton hamatum instead of the cool Cephalotes, right?

[00:02:32]Right? You would never want to see this instead. This is totally not way cooler in every way.

[00:02:41]And the Dolichoderus is just blazing past it. This These Dolichoderus are everywhere.

[00:02:46]Tropics moment.

[00:02:49]Thankfully, we did not have to wait long and before we knew it, we were heading down the Rio Tambopata towards our lodge.

[00:02:58]Today, we are heading to Refugio Amazonas and during [music] our stay, we'll be participating in the Discovering New Species project led by Wired Amazon.

[00:03:07]We'll be using one of their huge insect lights to try and find new [music] species hidden deep within the Amazon rainforest.

[00:03:15]There will be more about that in the next coming videos.

[00:03:18]But for now, we need to get checked in with the lodge and start exploring [music] the beautiful Amazon rainforest.

[00:03:29]So, we arrived to the lodge mere moments ago and already there's a Cephalotes queen.

[00:03:40]Now, she uh she looks a little messed up.

[00:03:46]Don't really know why.

[00:03:51]But that is still ridiculously cool even if she is probably not going to survive.

[00:04:07]She's still I mean literally just right here on the railing. Now these aren't the giant turtle ants that are everywhere. This is a relatively small species and these are highly bio-diverse in the tropics.

[00:04:23]But if you couldn't tell by their front door shaped head, these are very unique and some of the coolest ants out here in the tropics.

[00:04:37]So seeing that they've been pretty common but especially seeing a queen pretty early is is super cool. It's always cool to see queens and stuff.

[00:04:47]And seemingly out of nowhere in the exact same spot there's a huge parade of Camponotus novogranadensis.

[00:04:54]I do not know where they are all going in such a rush and why it's just like I mean that's that's the end. That one is the last ant.

[00:05:04]So I don't know why there's just a column of them. There's some little tiny Crematogaster here that they're having to dodge. So I don't know what they found down over there that is so interesting but little novogranadensis uh novogranadensis parade.

[00:05:21]Well here is a first that is a long time in the making.

[00:05:27]That is the infamous bullet ant.

[00:05:33]And it is so big that my macro lens hardly even wants to focus on it.

[00:05:41]That is a monster of an ant.

[00:05:46]Holy.

[00:05:50]Can you let it walk on your hand?

[00:05:53]Probably not.

[00:05:57]This is a nice one. That thing is huge.

[00:06:01]I I mean, seriously.

[00:06:07]Yeah, they're insane. That is redonkulous.

[00:06:10]I got to get a little picture of it. I mean, I knew they were big, but that's honestly even bigger than I thought they were going to be.

[00:06:18]Like I mentioned earlier, during this trip we'll be using Wired Amazon's lights to trap for insects and hopefully discover some new species.

[00:06:26]But, we were also lucky enough to be able to set up our own lights right outside of our room.

[00:06:30]The Wired Amazon lights are set up pretty far out in the jungle, so having something right at home base is very nice.

[00:06:38]Yeah, look at this black light.

[00:06:40]>> [laughter] >> That is perfect.

[00:06:47]Private black light, like our room is right there.

[00:06:50]So, we have this.

[00:06:52]It's not dark enough yet, so not too much, but Yeah, right. It's But, I mean, this something, but uh we we're getting teased. Look, like it's a little black light update. We have bunch of moths.

[00:07:11]We have a bunch of Acromyrmex queens, as well as some bullet ant males, Paraponera.

[00:07:17]And they are huge. I mean, that's tropical Acromyrmex queens are huge, and they are dwarfed by freaking uh Paraponera males.

[00:07:30]There's this guy flying [music] around, which is a night time wasp, of which the genus I forget the name, but I will uh I'll tell you. They're really cool. I I would like to see a nest of them during the day, cuz they're night time wasps, so they sleep during the day and their nest just look very cool with them all piled up on it.

[00:07:47]And then uh another pair of poner a male up there.

[00:07:53]There's a couple of them.

[00:07:55]Let's see, what do we have around the back?

[00:07:58]Cute little green silk moths.

[00:08:02]Some other little silk moths.

[00:08:05]Big longhorn beetle. This guy looks like a pelidnota beetle that we have in Arizona.

[00:08:09]Assassin bug.

[00:08:11]So, I mean nothing crazy but nothing to scoff at neither.

[00:08:17]And stuff has been coming and going. We had some big cockroaches and other stuff.

[00:08:24]Check out this absolute monster down here.

[00:08:27]This is, I believe, Neoponera commutata.

[00:08:33]Which is, I believe again, this is my first time seeing this species, so not a ton of experience, but I believe this is the largest species of Neoponera.

[00:08:42]And they might not be as big as bullet ants, however, they're not that far behind to be completely honest.

[00:08:50]They are just monstrous, really.

[00:09:00]Hear me >> [clears throat] >> Here we go. My first encounter with tropical army [music] ants in a long time is what appears to be a little bit of a Neivamyrmex colony.

[00:09:13]Nothing too crazy but not bad [music] and they have done some brood raiding.

[00:09:20]You can see them carrying pupae that is not their own.

[00:09:24]So, pretty cool and they are really fast.

[00:09:28]Really, really fast.

[00:09:32]That is dope.

[00:09:34]Shortly after I first noticed them, this Neiva Mermex trail really picked up and I watched them for quite a while.

[00:09:43]These ants flowed like a river through the jungle. It was insane.

[00:09:48]We have Neiva Mermex back home in Arizona, but they are nothing like this.

[00:09:53]Sure, these aren't all that much bigger.

[00:09:55]However, they're so much faster with much larger trails.

[00:10:00]Just goes to show that everything [music] is different in the tropics.

[00:10:05]Another thing that was really interesting is how unbothered the other ants seem to be by these.

[00:10:10]Neiva Mermex are, of course, specialist predators of other ants. So, to see some other species just wandering around next to this trail is really quite perplexing, but clearly it all works out for them.

[00:10:26]Well, I finally found a proper trail of these Acromyrmex [music] whose queens I've been seeing flying around all night.

[00:10:33]And they are pretty.

[00:10:34]I don't believe that they're just the typical Acromyrmex octospinosus that is common in the uh northern North American Neotropics. I definitely think these are something [music] different.

[00:10:46]But, just begs to see if it actually is or not.

[00:10:51]Who knows?

[00:11:04]Well, out of all of the times I've seen tropical Acromyrmex, this is by far the best display from them that I've ever seen.

[00:11:11]You would be forgiven for thinking that this is atta, but it is not. This is Acromyrmex.

[00:11:19]Huge trail coming down this log through here. I mean, they're cutting this plant, this fallen branch up.

[00:11:30]And it looks like over and back.

[00:11:35]Over and look at that.

[00:11:39]Up and over there.

[00:11:42]Continuing, continuing, following the branches.

[00:11:47]I hope I'm not walking past anything else that's super cool.

[00:11:52]Over here and then look at this nest. I thought that this was certainly atta when I walked past this thing earlier.

[00:12:01]But no.

[00:12:04]That right there is in fact an Acromyrmex colony, which is ridiculous.

[00:12:13]Look at them.

[00:12:15]Also, look at the plants here.

[00:12:17]This place is just ridiculous.

[00:12:21]But yeah, no, this is just a ginormous freaking Acromyrmex colony of whatever species this is.

[00:12:29]And just look at this.

[00:12:37]Look at it.

[00:12:42]I am flabbergasted.

[00:12:48]Here's a friendly reminder that being big and terrifying doesn't mean jack in the ant world.

[00:12:54]This relatively small Pheidole has completely subdued and will very soon kill this Paraponera queen.

[00:13:10]Just look at that.

[00:13:19]Unfortunately for her, that big powerful stinger is pretty big and useless against the force of hundreds of tiny ants.

[00:13:31]Okay, I had to temporarily put this thing in a tube to get it to calm down, but this is one of my target species for this trip, Pachycondyla crassinoda.

[00:13:41]Now, this is just a worker, but this is, I believe, the largest species of Pachycondyla in [music] the world, and they are rather enormous.

[00:13:50]If you allow me to demonstrate, we'll see if she displays why I had to put her in a tube, cuz she was skittering, I'll tell you that.

[00:14:03]There she goes, but you can see that is a huge ant.

[00:14:11]Huge, and super cool.

[00:14:17]To end off the night, I managed to see this bullet ant queen that wasn't being mold to death by a bunch of fightoly.

[00:14:24]It makes sense for these to be out as we've got about a dozen males back at our blacklight, and what better way to end off the night than with such a big and beautiful ant.

[00:14:38]Unfortunately, for now, that's all I have time to show you, but that's only the first night of this trip. There's so much more to come, so please do stay tuned, and thank you very much for watching.