Some caterpillars trick worker ants into feeding caterpillars instead of ant larvae. That’s just nasty.

Even worse, to paraphrase Homer Simpson, those ants are tricked with song!

Here’s how it works, the horrid parasitic Maculinea rebeli caterpillar are carried, by ants themselves, into ant nests where the infiltrators secrete smells just like ant larvae. This tricks the worker ants into feeding the caterpillars, but to ensure the very best treatment, they unleash a second trick – the caterpillars start to mimic the sounds that the queen ant makes. This makes those loyal little worker ants start to feed the caterpillars more than they feed their own larvae because they think their queen is asking for more food. Nasty, nasty parasitic caterpillars.

Over at New Scientist, you can read all about it, and also listen to the noises recorded by researchers from Oxford University, UK and Universita degli Studi di Torino, Italy. The clips allow you to compare the real deal with the phoney baloney. If you want to read the paper, it’s published by Science this week.

For more ant science, check out Look around you’s programme about water. Caterpillars, caterpillars, what hast though donest?

Image: Jeremy Thomas