Name: Splat! 5 Species that Masquerade as Bird Droppings
Uploaded: 2020-04-04T04:32:25.000Z
Duration: 8 min 35 s
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If you're a small animal, one of your biggest challenges in life

And there are all sorts of ways of doing this—

like, being toxic, or blending in with your surroundings.

Some species even disguise themselves as unpalatable things,

The five species we're going to talk about today

take this kind of masquerade to a whole new level of icky.

Instead of plants or rocks, they disguise themselves as poop.

That may be because bird droppings are a bit different

You see, unlike mammals, birds don't produce urine.

ammonia-containing compounds alongide their feces

—that's why bird droppings have that pasty white part.

And it's possible these additional unpleasant chemicals

make their poop that much more repulsive—which, in turn,

makes masquerading as bird poop that much more effective as a defense.

Or, it may simply be that bird poop is more common

on leaves and other, higher-up surfaces where small,

Either way, the five creatures on this list show that

in a dog-eat-dog world, looking like poop is a great way to stay off the menu.

The name “potter wasp” comes from the pot-shaped nests

most species in this group of hymenopterans make.

But of the thousands of potter wasp species out there,

one from Brazil—Minixi suffusum—builds nests that

It might seem surprising that these wasps would need to go

to such lengths to stay safe when they're pretty hardcore to begin with.

They are wasps, after all, so they're armed with a painful sting.

And when it's baby time, a female potter wasp lovingly deposits

a single egg into each chamber of her nest along with

a paralyzed but definitely still alive caterpillar,

which the soon-to-hatch larva will feed on

But those baby wasps are pretty defenseless.

And there are plenty of predators, like ants and other wasps,

that would love to make a snack out of them.

And it's probably why M. suffusum's nests are splotched white and brown

When researchers first noticed this, though,

they weren't sure what the white part actually was.

So, they watched the wasps build their nests to find out.

And it turns out that after a female seals in each of her eggs

with their caterpillar meals, she goes out and collects bird poop.

So the white stains on these nests are literally

The best way to look like bird poop is to be bird poop.

they plaster this stuff onto their nests.

Some researchers think that the additional layer of mud

mixed with the white paste could increase the structural integrity

of the nest or even help keep the nest cooler by reflecting more light.

Now, many orb-weaver spiders make large webs

—you know, those big, nearly-invisible bug traps you don't see

But Cyclosa ginnaga orb-weavers from tropical forests

in East Asia make at least part of their web really obvious.

The juvenile spiders weave a white, irregularly-shaped web decoration

on the spot where they hang out when they're waiting for a meal to stick.

And since these spiders have small brown and white bodies,

together, the web and spider look pretty convincingly

But scientists wondered if the strange web spots

were really effective against the spiders' main predators: wasps.

So, they measured the light that reflected off of bird droppings,

web decorations, and the spiders themselves.

And since bees and wasps are closely related, researchers used

previous research on bee vision to build models of what wasps likely see.

And based on all that, the team concluded that wasps

probably can't distinguish between actual bird poop

But that was still not confirmation that the decorations

So, the scientists dusted some of the web decorations with black powder

—essentially removing the spiders' ability to masquerade.

And when they did that, the spiders were attacked about 4 times as often.

Of course we'll probably never be able to tell exactly

what wasps are thinking—so we don't know if the spiders

But one way or another, those web decorations do seem to throw them off

Now, butterflies and moths are often beautiful, delicate creatures.

But some have distinctly less attractive origins.

The caterpillars of several species are mottled brown and white

And some caterpillars in Japan take this masquerade one step further.

They also seem to modify their behavior to pull off the ruse.

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Splat! 5 Species that Masquerade as Bird Droppings

episode

potential

illusion

integrity