Originally published at: Beetle grows a fake termite on its back to trick real termites to get free meals | Boing Boing
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Austrospirachtha carrijoi
Missed opportunity to reference two particular mutant resistance leaders in Total Recall, George and Kuato, even though it was Kuato who ran the show.
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Awesome! I’ll bet this feller is also mimicking termite communication pheromones. I wonder if the beetle serves any function in the termite community? I wouldn’t be surprised to find it’s got a job of some sort, helping out around the nest.
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A termite job? Help? Nah. The nasty trollish nightmare simulacrum on beetle boi’s back proves that it’s a total fucking asshole.
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Jim Henson wore nighmarish facsimiles of other creatures on his head and the Children’s Television Network was a huge benefit to humanity, eh? Maybe this beetle is a puppet show entertainer and is fed by the nest for providing valuable lessons to the workers… I dunno, you’re probably right, but it would be fun to study.
My thought came to mind because I was taught that dodder is a vegetable vampire sucking the lifeblood out of other plants (it has no chlorophyll of its own) but it turns out that dodder facilitates interspecies communications much like an Internet Service Provider. Dodder has a job, in a manner of speaking; it potentially improves the evolutionary prowess of its hosts. This beetle’s lack of overt weaponry makes me wonder if it’s got a job, too.
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Whoooooosh, my friend. Whooooooosh, I say.
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dumb termites. If they had opposable thumbs they wouldn’t fall for that trick
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Everybody wants prosthetic foreheads termites on their real heads
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Austrospirachtha because it is related to A. mimetes, another termite mimic described in 1973, and then carrijoi after the entomologist who discovered this one.
I don’t know, pop culture references are fun and all, but maybe it’s nice to leave future biologist something more than references to movies from decades before they were born. If A. mimetes had been, what are the odds we’d even get the reference now?
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Australia. Of course it’s from Australia.
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Ah - a rentier.
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… I am so confused
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I understand how evolution works an’ all, but sometimes it just seems so implausible!
I mean, I know how this thing evolved, but my brain is still going - How the fuck…
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Secret Shopper?
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