Nature can be truly whacked. These baby caterpillars smell just like ant larvae. So when the ants find them, they take them back to the ant colony and care for these parasites just like they were ant larvae. The caterpillars even know how to beg for food so that the ants will feed them. Meanwhile, a wasp is looking for one of these little caterpillar buggers so it can lay its egg inside it. One problem, it is defended by an army of ants. So the wasp releases pheromones that make the ants attack each other. Thus distracted, the wasp proceeds to lay its egg inside the caterpillar. Later, a baby wasp emerges from the chrysalis instead of a moth. Sounds like the plot to a horror film.
Life in the Undergrowth
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Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world. - Archimedes

ants got owned

Parasitic wasps are awesome. They do the same shit to fly pupal. Pretty fascinating stuff.
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"I tend to thougoughly enjoy my encounters significantly more with 120+ types, as I find them more stimulating. 100-110 people are okay too operating at full capacity." - Paper_Boy

Ran into another wacky story from nature. I was doing some reading on Anglerfish awhile back. You know, the fish with the glowly thing from finding Nemo? Anyway, I came across a passage on their reproduction methods. All of the angler fish caught by scientists were females. They did not find any males. They also noticed the females had a number of parasites on them. Turns out, the parasites were the males. When the males mature, their digestive system disintegrates, forcing them to quickly latch onto a female or die. He survives by fusing directly with her bloodstream. But his body continues to disintigrate until there is nothing left but a pair of nuts hanging onto the female. WTF?

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Originally posted by article
Anglerfish employ an unusual mating method. Because individuals are presumably locally rare and encounters doubly so, finding a mate is problematic. When scientists first started capturing ceratioid anglerfish, they noticed that all of the specimens were females. These individuals were a few inches in size and almost all of them had what appeared to be parasites attached to them. It turned out that these "parasites" were the remains of male ceratioids.

At birth, male ceratioids are already equipped with extremely well developed olfactory organs that detect scents in the water. When it is mature, the male's digestive system degenerates, making him incapable of feeding independently, which necessitates his quickly finding a female anglerfish to prevent his death. The sensitive olfactory organs help the male to detect the pheromones that signal the proximity of a female anglerfish. When he finds a female, he bites into her skin, and releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. The male then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of gonads, which releases sperm in response to hormones in the female's bloodstream indicating egg release. This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready to spawn, she has a mate immediately available.

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Some more ant videos, this time the ants get some pay back:

Termite World - Life in the Undergrowth

Ants attack flying termites

Ants Vs Crabs

Ants vs Humans

Humans fight back
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Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world. - Archimedes

Interesting Kub..
There's a type of parasite that eats out a fish's tongue and actually replaces it (as the tongue) it gets food as the fish swallows it.

http://jwz.livejournal.com/538843.html


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I don't think anyone has unlimited time, and that seems like a particularly strange conclusion to draw from about 20 minutes worth of posting on a message board. Hassan-i-Suckah

wasp's nest

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Originally posted by SarX
Interesting Kub..
There's a type of parasite that eats out a fish's tongue and actually replaces it (as the tongue) it gets food as the fish swallows it.

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You think that's weird?

check this out
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<[TD]ViRuZ> You have balls...I like balls

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Originally posted by Sappy
wasp's nest

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Originally posted by The_G0D
You think that's weird?

check this out

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That is amazing shit. Only a matter of time before similar parasites are artificially replicated and altered for a purely controllable human race.

...or have they already done it?! O M G!
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<[TD]ViRuZ> You have balls...I like balls

Damn wasps at it again. Except these wasps don't lay their eggs in other insects. They infect tree buds of oak trees. The wasp egg causes a genetic change so instead of an acorn growing, the oak tree grows a hard protective home for it's new parasite. And just when you though the wasp had a good deal going there, another wasp shows up to examine this hard protective shell. Except this is a different kind of wasp. Instead of causing a genetic change in the tree, it take a brute force approach and drills through the hard shell. Then it infects the larva growing inside with her own egg, which eats the other wasps larvae.

Life of Insects - Attenborough: Life in the Undergrowth - BBC
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Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world. - Archimedes

Rodents of unusual size? I don't think they exist.

Animal partnerships
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Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world. - Archimedes

kool thread

Large fish eating a duck
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Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world. - Archimedes

ok ok you got me
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<[TD]ViRuZ> You have balls...I like balls

Check out the strongest species in the world:

Strongest living species

The tiny beetle is pushing rocks, logs, and carrying lead weights.
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Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world. - Archimedes

Nature of the cuckoo duck

Asshole bird. Kills half the eggs in the nest of another bird and lays it's own eggs in their place. After it hatches, the demon offspring of the bird finishes off the job it's parent started by throwing the other eggs in the next to their death. The poor foster parent bird could do nothing but watch helplessly.
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Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world. - Archimedes

his body continues to disintigrate until there is nothing left but a pair of nuts hanging onto the female. WTF?
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Callaway Diablo EDGE Driver
DVD Box set

How about this one: The male of the Argonaut octopus penis snaps off and remains in the female after mating. Ick?

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Originally posted by article
Argonauts exhibit extreme sexual dimorphism in size and lifespan. Females grow up to 10 cm and make shells up to 30 cm, while males rarely surpass 2 cm. The males only mate once in their short lifetime, whereas the females are iteroparous, capable of having offspring many times over the course of their lives. In addition, the females have been known since ancient times, while the males were only described in the late 19th century.

The males lack the dorsal tentacles used by the females to create their shells. The males use a modified arm, the hectocotylus, to transfer sperm to the female. For fertilization, the arm is inserted into the female's pallial cavity, then is detached from the male. The hectocotylus when found in females was originally described as a parasitic worm

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Moving carpet of life on the sea floor. Quite colorful:

Life - Timelapse of swarming monster worms and sea stars - BBC One
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Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world. - Archimedes

damn I was just about to eat breakfast too haha
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<[TD]ViRuZ> You have balls...I like balls

quote:

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Originally posted by article
The Rocky Mountain locust was the most important locust species that ranged through almost the entire western half of the United States (and some western portions of Canada) until the end of the 19th century. The insect may have produced larger swarms than any other locust species. One 1870s sighting famous to entomologists recorded a swarm 198,000 square miles (513,000 km²) in estimated size—greater than the area of California. According to The Guinness Book of Records under the heading 'greatest concentration of animals', the swarm must have contained at least 12.5 trillion insects with a total weight of 27.5 million tons. But less than 30 years later, the species was apparently extinct.

The last major swarms of Rocky Mountain locust were at their peak between 1873 and 1877, when the locust caused $200 million in crop damage in Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and other states. It seems that the beginning of the end for the Rocky Mountain locust can be traced to its pattern of swarming for a period, then retreating to sandy river beds to breed. It was during that period, when its population had collapsed back into its habitat, that it was most vulnerable to farmers digging up that same ground to plant crops. Reports from this era state that farmers brought up thousands of egg cases as they plowed their fields. Through one of the most spectacular coincidences in agricultural history, western agriculture basically destroyed the permanent breeding ground of the locusts. Had the Rocky Mountain locust not died out, North American agriculture would have had to adapt to its presence. Thus, at least initially, it would likely have developed quite differently as it did in absence of this insect. This leaves North America as the only populated continent without a major locust.

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Originally posted by article
If you haven’t heard of xenophyophores, you’re probably in good company. First thought to be sea sponges, these ocean dwellers have been tossed around taxanomically for nearly a century until finally settling into their role as the world’s largest single-celled organism. A recent expedition to the Mariana Trench by National Geographic spotted the strange creatures some six miles under the ocean, the greatest depth at which xenophyophores have been found.

Though they come in different shapes and sizes, xenophyophores are widely distributed throughout the world and can live in truly brutal conditions. This is partly due to their ability to eat sediment and tolerate high levels of heavy metals like uranium. In addition to their weird single-celled status, these creatures also secrete a kind of organic cement and build their bodies out of whatever is lying around nearby. Amazingly, they can grow to pretty spectacular sizes. The ones recently found in the Mariana were about four inches wide, and they were not even the largest on record.

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Originally posted by article
A new species of freshwater fish described by a North Carolina State University researcher has several interesting – and perhaps cringe-inducing – characteristics, including a series of four hooks on the male genitalia.

While more research is needed, Langerhans says that four-hooked genitalia on males can serve a purpose when females attempt to block or restrict mating attempts. 'In Gambusia, some females, including G. quadruncus, have evolved modifications that appear to function as a blocking device – essentially a big ball of tissue blocking most of the genital pore – restricting entry of the male's gonopodial tip. Thus, the female would have to behaviorally allow the male to mate or the male would have to evolve a counter response to avoid this problem.' The four-hooked genitalia could be that counter-response, Langerhans says. 'Having four hooks on the gonopodium may provide a means of overcoming female resistance, latching on to the gonopore and transferring sperm in a manner that facilitates effective sperm transfer.

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World's Largest Jellyfish
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Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world. - Archimedes