Today's 60 Second Science Podcast is brought to you by Woody Allen as an ant:
Parasitized Ants Get Berry Sick
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Results tagged “ants” from 60 Second Science
Parasitized Ants Get Berry Sick [podcast]
Weird World Report: Parasite makes ants look like berries
What, you’ve never heard of an antberry?
While studying black ants in the Panamanian forest, a group of American biologists found a roundworm with a bizarre lifecycle. When an ant devours the parasite, its abdomen swells up and turns red, effectively giving the ant the appearance of a juicy red berry—and dinner, for a passing bird.
(Remember irrepressible Violet Beauregarde, that world champion gum chewer who swelled up to look like a giant blueberry in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? Perhaps the problem with Mr. Wonka’s experimental three-course-meal gum was that it harbored some parasitic nematode…)
Birds don’t usually feast on the ants, but they love the berries. And when an ant looks like a berry, the researcher hypothesize, the bird eats the bug, and the parasite spreads to the bird. The researchers say this is the first example of "fruit mimicry" caused by a parasite.
The scientists, Robert Dudley, Stephen P. Yanoviak, and Michael E. Kaspari, were actually studying the aeronautical ability of ants in the tropical forest. But they kept finding ants with swollen, berry-like bellies, and soon, speculation about the berry bellies turned to beer:
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Invading Ants Go On Diet
Today's 60 Second Science Podcast is brought to you by Ant Farm Central:
Full transcript after the jump...
Evil Butterflies Enslave Hardworking Ants
7 million teenage girls on lithium tattoo them above their buttcracks and this is how butterflies repay the tribute. Not anymore. It turns out that butterflies--that emblem of bliss, transformation, and the depressing aspirations of backwoods headshop employees--are slavers. At least the large blue butterfly Maculinea alcon.
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