Shadowing Practice: 1,000 Ants vs. Obstacles! - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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These are ants.
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And today, they start here.
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They have to beat four epic obstacles to reach the promised land.
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Each obstacle will be harder than the last.
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Will they make it?
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Or is it game over?
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Let the ant games begin!
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Meet Elizabeth, our queen ant.
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She has one job.
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Lay eggs and grow an army.
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But to do that, she's gonna need some help.
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Meet Tank, Houdini, Chopper, and Todd.
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Yo, what's wrong with that guy?
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He hasn't even left the test tube yet.
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Hey, don't talk about Todd like that.
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We love Todd.
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But they have a big problem.
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There is no food in this entire nursery.
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So the ants need to do what ants do best, explore.
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Welcome to Ant Canyon!
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They just need to cross, grab a seed, and then take it back home.
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Easy.
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But for an ant, crossing this bridge with a seed is the equivalent of a human walking a tightrope over the Grand Canyon.
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He found it!
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Oh my goodness.
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Honestly, this might be too easy.
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I never doubted him for a second.
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Wait, where are you going?
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The food is that way.
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There is no food in here.
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That's the whole problem.
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I think he's giving up.
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So much for the promised land.
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Hey, get out of there!
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I present to you the Grant and you.
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Uh, they already have a canyon.
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Oh.
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And plus, I need you to go to their natural habitat.
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Seriously, again?
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Yes, I need you to think like an ant.
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See ya.
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And I have a challenge for you.
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Can you spot these ants sitting somewhere in this video?
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You're late.
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That's Sonny, and his job is to keep me alive.
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Hey, wait up!
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Jamie sent me to find a real ant nest, but the only way in is miles down this river.
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Look at that goat!
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Two rams crash heads at 20 miles an hour.
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That sound can be heard from a mile away. Where are they?
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We're hunting ants, right?
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Ants, right?
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Not down here.
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Harvester ants hate water.
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They can't swim.
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Their nests are up in dry country.
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We need to climb.
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Look at them go!
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Tank wasn't giving up.
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He was telling his friends.
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You see, ants talk by tapping each other with their antenna.
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It's like sending a text message to the whole colony.
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One ant alone turned back.
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But together, Let's go!
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I can get it!
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I can get the food!
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They're unstoppable!
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But taking all these seeds back is gonna take forever.
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Say hello to the reinforcements!
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They might be happy now, but that's 50 more mouths to feed.
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And each challenge is only gonna get harder.
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Now we just have to find one tiny nest in all of this.
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Look at this, it's a new claim.
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We are definitely in the right place.
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Ow!
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I hate the desert.
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Before we go any further, Sunny wants to check we have everything we need to survive.
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Out here you get nothing but what you can carry.
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Water, knife, food, compass, signal mirror, whistle, first aid, sleeping bag, tent.
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And if you can't see me, blow this three times.
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Not now!
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I got a knife, a juice box,
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a sock, night vision goggles because they look sick, and a harmonica.
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A harmonica? For what? For morale.
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I'm really nervous for this challenge.
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The ants need to dig through this green goo to get one step closer to the promised land.
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Scientists at NASA use this exact gel to study if ants could build tunnels in space.
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It turns out, ants will always dig, no matter where they are.
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But for the last eight hours, they've made little progress.
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Wait a minute, they're not tunneling, they're eating!
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All that sugar is pure rocket fuel for the queen.
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The more they feed her, the more crowded the nursery gets.
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When a colony runs out of space, they don't just pack up and move.
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They launch a massive underground expansion.
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These guys need more room and quick.
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They're digging!
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They're actually digging!
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I would give anything to know what they're thinking right now.
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Dig, dig, dig!
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More room!
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One bite at a time and they're completing this challenge.
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Together, these guys can do anything.
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Wait, what is Todd doing over there?
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No, no, no, no, no, he's trapped.
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We've got two hours of light.
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We make camp tonight because tomorrow we hunt for that nest.
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Shelter, then fire, in that order.
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Sonny's done this a thousand times, but I am seriously struggling.
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Tomorrow, we'll find the ants, and then they will lead us to a nest for Jamie.
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Look out!
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Oh!
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What is it?
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What is it?
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It's huge!
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This is the biggest scorpion I've ever seen.
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Turns out, every scorpion on Earth glows under UV light.
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You could be sitting in a field of a hundred of them and never know.
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With these night vision goggles, nothing will sneak up on us again.
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Whoa!
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That's a kangaroo rat!
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A master of desert survival.
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That's so cool!
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When the sun goes down, the desert comes alive.
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First, the good news.
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Remember Todd stuck in the tunnel?
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They dug him out!
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Of course they did!
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Ants are the ultimate team players.
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They will literally take for hours to rescue a friend.
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The bad news?
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Everything else.
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Over the last few days, the eggs hatched.
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All of them!
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The ants have been ripping through this gel, which is supercharging their army.
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This nursery was made for like 50 ants.
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And now there's way more than that.
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So I'm calling in backup.
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What now?
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Oh.
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Joel, head count, how many ants do we have?
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673, 674, 674.
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Jamie, this is impossible, they keep moving.
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Then estimate.
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I don't know, a lot.
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My estimate is a lot of ants.
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We might not know the exact head count, but all those mouths meant one thing.
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They absolutely smashed challenge two.
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Jamie, there's an ant on the ceiling.
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Jamie?
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Bay 2 and still no nest.
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But we are not leaving without one.
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A harvester nest is actually difficult to find.
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Almost all of it is underground.
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So from up top, all we'll see is a tiny mound.
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This is a long-nosed leopard lizard.
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Fastest guy out here.
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I'm gonna call him Spotty.
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Ah, he doesn't want to leave.
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I realize I didn't pack any food, and I am starving.
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So Sonny's cooking me lunch.
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It's that cactus that stung me yesterday.
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Good morning!
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Today is maze day!
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This is bad.
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This is really bad.
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The ants are climbing up the walls.
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This is a red alert.
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The ants are getting out of that tiny hole.
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Hey Jamie, there's an ant in the kitchen.
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That's not mine.
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Well, there's like eight of them.
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Stay calm.
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Everyone stay calm.
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They are everywhere.
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And while I catch them, I want to tell you about Odoo.
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Odoo is an all-in-one software for running a business.
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Your website, your store, your invoices, everything.
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All in one place.
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Instead of using a dozen apps, you just need Odoo.
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Behold, the bug bee gun.
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Odoo runs your whole online store.
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so you can focus on what's important to you, like catching these ants.
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Odoo tracks your inventory in real time, scans stock with your phone, and even writes your delivery and purchase orders for you.
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Okay, catching them was step one.
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Step two is making sure this can never happen again.
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Odoo's first app is free, for life, so check it out by scanning the QR code on the screen.
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There, nothing gets in or out ever again.
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And every ant is accounted for.
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I'm hot, I'm tired, and I'm done.
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But then Sunny spotted something.
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Look, there's your ants.
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We found a line of Harvester ants.
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So now we can track them back to their nest.
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This was supposed to be quick, but it has been hours.
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What?
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What's wrong?
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I think we've been following ants the wrong way.
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I think we're lost.
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Lost?
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You can't read this map?
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I mean, the sun's really bright and it's hot out.
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Okay, don't panic.
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I can read a map.
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We got this.
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One of us can read and one of us can carry.
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Together, we're like one big weird ant.
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Sunny stashed a car out here.
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Find the car and we're saved.
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There it is!
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There's the car!
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This thing is so cool.
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It even has a tent on the roof.
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I love the nest.
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And now we can definitely find a real ant nest.
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On foot, it would have taken forever.
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But with this, we can cover way more ground.
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Come on, Houdini!
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He keeps going the wrong way.
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But he's the only one brave enough to try level three.
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An ant's brain is smaller than a grain of salt, with about 250,000 brain cells.
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Humans have 86 billion.
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Houdini is up against the labyrinth.
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This thing is an airtight construction and completely cheat proof.
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I would know because I spent a week designing it.
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I don't even think I could solve this.
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But to get to the promised land, every single ant has to make it through here.
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All 1,000 of them.
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And right now, the entire colony is relying on Houdini.
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If he gets stuck in here, nobody is coming to save him.
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He's picking up speed!
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He's not guessing anymore.
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He's a maze master.
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He's almost out.
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Let's go!
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He did it!
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He beat the maze!
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But Houdini is just one ant.
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And we need 1,000 to get through it.
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Thankfully, when an ant walks, it leaves behind an invisible scent trail.
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Nestmates follow the smell, and the best route gets stronger with every ant.
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The ants are running Houdini's exact line.
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One brave ant went in alone, so now the colony can follow.
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Challenge three is complete.
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And if you want your own pet at home, Pet at Home, I'm giving away another ecosystem kit.
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Last week, Maddie and Merritt from Oklahoma won.
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So comment for your chance to win.
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Good morning.
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Three days on port and now this.
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Okay, I take back every bad thing I said about the desert.
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This is epic.
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Ant colonies love the open gravel flats.
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We're almost there.
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Yeah!
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What's wrong?
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It's a hundred and ten degrees outside and we are miles from the nearest town.
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This old can of gas is our last shot.
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Let's hope this works.
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Yes!
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It did not take long to reach the flats.
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That's a pronghorn.
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It's the fastest land animal in North America.
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It runs 60 miles an hour, as fast as a car on the highway.
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No predator alive can outrun it.
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And then we found it.
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That's it.
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That's a real one.
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Hi guys.
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We found you.
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They cover their nest in gravel, keeps the heat in, and the rain runs right off.
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Jamie said survive like an ant, and I think I finally get it.
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Out here alone, you don't make it.
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But each one of these guys has a tiny job, and together they can beat the desert.
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I'm bringing home a little piece of the desert for Jamie's ants.
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Now let's get back to the studio.
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This is it.
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The final challenge.
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The Hydro Pit.
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They have to cross the water to get to the promised land.
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But if they fall in, they'll get eaten by vicious predators.
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But they've stopped right at the water.
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Come on, guys.
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You're so close.
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Wait, wait, wait.
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Stop the challenge.
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What?
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Why?
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Harvestrants can't swim.
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They need a bridge.
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But we were too late.
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Todd!
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Todd's in the water!
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No, no, no, no, no, hang on!
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Jamie, they're going in!
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They're going in after him!
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That's a raft!
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They're making a raft!
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Ants are covered in tiny, waterproof hairs.
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So instead of sinking, they hold on to each other to float.
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A boat made out of ants!
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They're not just saving Todd.
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They're floating across!
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They made it!
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These ants have done enough to prove themselves.
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I don't think the rest of the colony has to.
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Come on, guys!
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The bridge is down, but they're not home yet.
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Now it's the home stretch, the longest climb of their lives.
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Wait, why are they going backwards?
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It's right here.
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Ants vote on a new home.
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Only when enough Scouts have agreed does the whole colony commit.
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It's a literal ant election.
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Finally, here comes a scout!
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Here they come!
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Here they all come!
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Everything they fought for.
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Food, sugar, and endless room to explore.
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Oh, nice!
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You kept my mountain!
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Yeah, you were right.
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Todd loves that thing.
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Big rock!
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We started with just five tiny ants, but they grew into an elite army.
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Alone, none of them make it.
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But together, they built an empire.
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Who Will Love This Video for English Practice?
This video is perfect for beginner to intermediate English learners who want to make speaking practice fun! If you’re tired of boring drills and want to learn real, conversational language while staying engaged, this is for you. The dialogue is lively, with short sentences and relatable scenarios—ideal for building confidence in understanding everyday speech. Whether your goal is to improve English pronunciation or just sound more natural, the video’s energetic tone makes it easy to follow and mimic.
Words & Idioms to Add to Your Toolkit
The video is packed with standout phrases that native speakers use. Here are a few to "steal" and practice:
- "Epic obstacles": Big, exciting challenges. Example: "Moving to a new country has been my epic obstacle this year."
- "Promised land": A goal or place that feels perfect. Example: "After hours of studying, the weekend is my promised land."
- "Game over": A situation where you’ve failed. Example: "I forgot my passport—game over for the trip."
- "So much for": Expresses disappointment when something doesn’t happen. Example: "So much for my quiet morning—my neighbor’s dog is barking!"
Master the Accent with Shadow Speak
To nail the pronunciation, try shadowspeak (or "shadow speaking")—repeat the lines aloud immediately after the speaker, copying their tone and rhythm. The video’s host uses a clear, upbeat accent with rising intonation in questions (e.g., "Will they make it?") and emphasis on key words ("Hey, don’t talk about Todd like that!"). Focus on:
- Stress in phrases: Notice which words are emphasized, like "epic" in "epic obstacles" or "big" in "big problem."
- Contractions: The speaker uses "gonna" (going to) and "they’re" (they are)—mimic these to sound more natural.
- Pacing: The dialogue moves quickly but clearly—practice keeping up to build fluency. Pause and rewind if needed, then try again!
With shadowspeaks practice, you’ll soon find your English sounding more confident and native-like. This video isn’t just entertaining—it’s a powerful tool for English speaking practice that feels like play. So hit play, start mimicking, and watch your skills grow!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | have been ripping · we've been following |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | hasn't even left · they've made · I've ever seen |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | can be heard · was made · is accounted |
| Superlatives the -est / the most … — the top or bottom of a group | the biggest · the best · the nearest |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.