Name: Seriously, None of These Are Ants | 8 Ant Mimics
Uploaded: 2020-03-30T03:33:21.000Z
Duration: 9 min 20 s
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Ants are one of the most abundant organisms on land.

But not everything that looks or acts like an ant/is an ant.

Mimicry is a pretty common ecological phenomenon,

Sometimes it's defensive, sometimes aggressive.

and sometimes it's all about how you act.

There are a bunch of different kinds of mimicry,

and most of them don't have hard and fast lines between them.

But these creatures have mastered practically all of them --

To start off with, let's take a look at the jumping spider Myrmarachne.

Instead of the usual squat and stout form a jumping spider might take,

these little guys have evolved some extreme body modifications.

They've turned super long and skinny, all the better to mimic an ant.

The males of some species take it even further,

evolving mouth-parts large enough to resemble a worker carrying cargo.

They're so big, in fact, that the spider can't get venom through its fangs anymore.

This kind of body modification is impressive,

but also not super uncommon when dealing with ant mimics.

As for why this spider would evolve to look like an ant,

Various species can be aggressive or bad-tasting,

and can come equipped with biting jaws, venomous stingers, or even sprays of acid.

And they can use pheromones to summon more ants.

but they're not usually well-equipped for defense.

They don't have armor plating or thousands of nestmates to call on.

There are a lot of animals that might think a spider makes a pretty good snack,

like birds, wasps, or even other, bigger species of spider.

Which means it might be safer to look like an ant than a spider.

These ant-mimicking spiders back up their myrmecomorphy with behavioral mimicry too.

They wave their front legs like antennae.

They even maintain this ruse when hunting.

Instead of leaping at prey, they run up and tap it,

By doing this, they keep themselves safe from those other spiders and birds,

who might prefer not to tangle with the whole biting, stinging, swarming ant business.

There are species of katydids and cicada-like insects

called planthoppers with similar strategies.

Much stranger are the plants that have been hypothesized to mimic ants in a similar way.

like the bee orchid that tricks bees into pollinating them.

But scientists in Israel have also suggested

that dark spots and flecks on plants such as cocklebur and passion flowers

might be ant-mimicking defenses against herbivores.

But defensive mimicry isn't the only way to pretend to be an ant.

An interesting possible case of mimicry comes

with some species of spider wasps in Australia.

Back in 1969, a scientist in Australia was out looking at a bunch of small,

metallic blue ants running about in the sand, when he noticed one was walking oddly.

On closer inspection, he also noticed two little nubbins — wings.

And its “waist” didn't look right either.

Now, wasps already kind of look like ants

but the lack of wings and exact color match

made it seem like an almost perfect mimic.

At first blush, you might call this another example of Batesian mimicry

— an organism mimicking a more harmful one for defense.

But here's the thing: the wasps aren't defenseless

So their mimicry isn't a bluff to make them seem more dangerous than they already are.

where two harmful species look similar to each other,

and both benefit because the overall signal is stronger.

It's like how both wasps and bees carry black-and-yellow warning colors.

In this case, the wasp seemed to be sharing Mullerian mimicry with the ant.

predators would learn not to mess with little blue scurrying things.

That said, Mullerian mimicry of ants seems to be mostly limited to… other ants.

Evidence of this beyond a handful of possible examples is a bit sparse.

and maybe even plants use ant mimicry to keep themselves safe.

But some mimics don't just try to pretend to be an ant.

They're out to exploit -- and even eat -- the ones they copy.

Consider the somewhat uncreatively named large blue butterfly,

Like all butterflies, they start their lives as caterpillars.

But these caterpillars spend almost no time eating leaves.

the caterpillar goes down to the ground and waits to get found by red ants.

take it back to the nest, putting it in with the other grubs.

There it gets waited on and fed by the nurse ants,

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Seriously, None of These Are Ants | 8 Ant Mimics

phenomenon

pretend

strategy

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