Giant Long-Legged Carpenter Ant – Southeast Asian Colossus
 
This impressive tropical variety of Carpenter Ant originates from Southeast Asia, with natural populations found across regions such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and parts of China. It is regarded as one of the most formidable Carpenter Ant species in its range, and in China it is considered the largest recorded Camponotus-type species.
 
Formerly referred to in hobby literature as Dinomyrmex ashokai due to its extreme size, this species commands attention at every stage of development. The queen is truly enormous, reaching an average length of around 28 mm, making her one of the most imposing queens available in the ant-keeping hobby.
 
Colony Castes & Size
The worker force is just as remarkable:
Queens: ~26–30 mm
Major workers: up to ~24 mm
Standard workers: ~12–18 mm
 
To put this into perspective, even the smaller workers rival the size of many queen ants from common species, making this colony a true giant among ants.
Appearance & Adaptations
 
Both queens and workers display a striking reddish-black colouration, giving them a bold and elegant appearance. Workers are especially distinctive due to their extremely long, slender bodies and elongated necks, which give them a “giraffe-like” profile when moving.
This unique morphology is believed to be an adaptation for accessing nectar sources in deep or narrow floral structures, allowing them to exploit food sources unavailable to many other ants.
 
Difficulty: Advanced (Kept 2 or more exotic species)
Food: seeds, honey water and insects
Temp: 22-28°C
Humidity: 50-70%
Founding: clasutral without feeding
Colony size: 1-300 workers
Hibernation: No
 
Live arrival guarantee:
We guarantee the live arrival of your Queen they come well packed in our jiffy bags which have two-sided padding as well as an additional layer of bubble wrap around our test tubes. We are the only company in the United Kingdom to offer our live arrival guarantee of your queen as well as an additional 14-day guarantee if the colony if kept in the original test tube for all our European species. Why do we do this? We are confident with our colony’s health and our packaging process as well as our care guides, we also believe in our customers and making sure they have a good ant keeping experience.
 
Live arrival guarantee we ensure the live arrival of the queen only upon delivery contact us within 24 hours of receiving the Queen dead on arrival with a picture of the dead queen and the original workers. DO NOT TRANSFER THE DEAD QUEEN OR WORKERS TO A NEST AS THIS VOIDS YOUR WARRNTY. For our additional 14-day guarantee for European species the Queen and workers must be kept in the original test tube sealed with the cotton and care sheet instructions followed if you want to keep this additional guarantee do not transfer to a nest or your warranty is VOIDED (we recommend you keep the 14-day warranty).
 
We have no control over the environment outside the test tube and have no influence in the conditions the responsibility once placed outside the test tube within the 14-day period the responsibility is with the buyer. 9 times out of 10 colonies die in the nest due to lack of water access, food, temperature, oxygen or stress due to vibrations or exposure to excess light. If your colony does fail inside a nest contact us, we can advise what went wrong but it is up to you to buy another ant colony, you will succeed but sometimes it does not work the first time. Research is key to success with ant keeping and follow our guides.