wobblegong

Thinkin' about animals....

  • 🐟/🐠/they/them

deviantArt: jWobblegong

*tiny furry cheeps*


FiendishAuburn
@FiendishAuburn asked:

Ooo, animal fact please!

Phengaris arion, the large blue butterfly, is a pretty basic butterfly native to Eurasia and would not stand out except that it's a brood parasite... of ANTS. The caterpillars have a pheromone & call combo that mimics an ant queen, and early in their life use this to trick a worker ant into carting what it thinks it a distressed queen deep into the nest.

This is, I must note, pretty fucked on its own because from the perspective of small animals ants are unstoppable helldemon murdermachines. Staying as far away from ants as possible in the priority of an astonishing number of organisms.

Instead the caterpillars figured out how to pass as an ant, get carted into the nest, and then start the carnivorous phase of their life. They devour all the ant larvae they can, maintaining the charade the whole while, as they grow from ~1.3mg to 173mg large. They even pupate in the nest! In the end they emerge as a comparatively enormous butterfly, crawl out to freedom, and go about their regular adult butterfly business as if they hadn't just starred in the ant equivalent of Alien.


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