Ants Tricked Into Raising Butterflies
WHO: Jeremy A. Thomas of Britain's University of Oxford and the Journal Science
WHAT: Butterflies are tricking ants to feed their young ones and give special treatments. The European butterfly Maculina give out a scent which mimics the ants and then make themselves at home in the ant's nest. Once they become a caterpillar, they beg for food just like an ant does. When the ant queen make subtle sounds for the worker ants, the caterpillars learned those mimics too. If there are any food shortages, the nurse ants would kill their own larvae to feed to the caterpillars who are pretending to be the queen ants. The real queen ant and the caterpillar would be in different colonies so they don't see each other. Then for an experiment, a butterfly pupa who was pretending to be the queen ant was placed in a chamber with the real queen ant and other worker ants. The real queen ants started to attack the caterpillar, but the workers helped the caterpillar by attacking its own queen ants.
WHEN:Thursday February 5, 2009
WHERE: Washington
WHY: The real queen ant was placed with the workers and the caterpillar because it was an experiment. It was an experiment on to check who the worker ants would help more and who they would think their own queen ant was.
MY OPINION: That was a smart idea because it is so "cool" on how the caterpillars could learn everything an ant knows. The caterpillars are really smart and can learn things fast. Since they have to get used to an ant life, it must have been really difficult for them to do that. In my opinion, caterpillars seem smarter than ants. Overall, this was a great article to write about because I learned a lot on the way some caterpillars and ants live.
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