In the insect world, the ant nest is definitely the "seven-star hotel" that bugs yearn for. Because there are a variety of abundant food resources, as well as warm and humid shelter, and all food and accommodation are free.
Not only that, but the nest also has its own highly motivated, 24/7 service team and security team. The bugs are thinking: If you can live in a comfortable nest, then this life is enough.
The nest is heavily guarded, like an insurmountable fortress for the bugs. Even if you occasionally skip the security guard's interrogation, you will soon be discovered and attacked in an all-round way, and finally you will be basically unloaded into eight pieces, which will become the inventory food of the nest.
However, the attraction of the nest is strong, in order to live in the dream nest, a class of bugs called "ant-loving beetles" have sprung up in the insect army, and after hundreds of millions of years of evolution, they have finally cultivated the skill of surviving in the nest. However, the cultivation of "immortals" is also divided into high and low, and the cleverness of "spells" is also different.
Let's first talk about the various "little immortals" in the "ant-loving beetle".
Like a well-functioning human society, fair trade is the norm of ant societies. There is a class of ant-loving beetles called "Yan Jia", which have evolved special honey glands at the back of their chest, and they earn care and food by providing them with sweet honey juice.
This honey juice has a great allure for ants, and in order to obtain it, the ants will not only take good care of the "Yan Jia"; they will also regurgitate food for them to enjoy. In return, the ant only needs to bite its honey glands, and the "Yan Jia" will immediately secrete honey juice for the ants to lick, and the relationship between the two is extremely harmonious and harmonious.
But there is a "cryptopteryx", although it also relies on the glands in the abdomen to soothe the ants, so that the ants can tolerate their lives in the nest; but its condition is much more humble.
These "cryptopteryxes" have only the right to eat the carcasses of ants, and sometimes they will steal food from the ants' stockpiles, but are often found and attacked by worker ants. At this point, the glands in the abdomen become life-saving tools, and they take advantage of the fact that the worker ants lick the secretions of the glands to escape the danger.
There are also some "cryptopteryn beetles" that can also soothe ants with special comfort glands in their abdomen, but they have only been given the right to pick up garbage in their nests. Perhaps because the glands evolved by these "cryptopterym beetles" are not sweet enough to be attractive.
In addition to supplying honey, some "ant-loving beetles" have not evolved some "magic weapons", but they use labor to "pay rent". The beetles provide a "attentive" cleaning service to make the ants accept them, in which they use some special structures at the end of the abdomen and feet to cleanse and massage the host ant's body. When receiving services, ants are comfortable and do not move, but sometimes the "courtesy" of beetles is too much, and the ants will punish them slightly.
The "little immortals" of the ant-loving beetles finally gained a place in the nest through the strategy of fair trade, but compared with the "great immortals' spells" in the ant-loving beetles, it can only be regarded as a small skill of carving insects.
There is a class of hidden wing beetles, they have cultivated the ability to hide from the sky and cross the sea, mixed with white food and live to the extreme. First, they use ants' pheromones to cover their bodies with chemical molecules that ants use to identify each other. In addition to the chemical cover method; they also imitate the "spoken language" of ants, because ants communicate by rubbing special parts of the abdomen to produce low-frequency sounds, and the queen, worker and soldier ants of the ants all have different special sounds, but these nest beetles can accurately imitate three different "spoken languages".
This complex camouflage of pheromones plus "colloquialism" allows beetles to roam, feed, and socialize with other beetles in their nests, while deceiving ants of all ranks.
In addition, by imitating the sound of the queen, they can also enjoy the privilege. Scientists have experimented with beetles imitating queens in front of worker ants, and they will pose in the same formation as when protecting the queens, and begin their super service.
By imitating the queen, this nest beetle suddenly became the nobleman in the nest and had the right to enter the VIP area of the nest, thus obtaining the careful care and protection of the worker ants. So this beetle enjoys an absolutely high quality of life in the nest.
However, like human society, there are also some "little devil kings" in the ant-loving beetles. They have learned a lot of despicable methods from the beginning of the larvae, the larvae of this cryptopter beetle will quickly hold the head of the worker ant when they touch the mouth organs and antennae of the worker ant, imitate the begging behavior of the larvae, stimulate the upper lip of the worker ant, until the worker ant regurgitates the food into their mouths. What's more, in addition to competing with the larvae for the feeding of worker ants, sometimes the larvae of this cryptopteryl beetle will directly prey on the larvae.
And the surprising thing is still to come, this cunning beetle is very similar to the appearance of ants after adults, they will try to obtain another ant's pheromone outside the nest, when the original nest is almost destroyed by them, they will use another ant's pheromone to find another new nest. In order to get the care of the new host, they also evolved the honey glands in the abdomen, and at the door of the new nest, they would secrete honey to attract the worker ants to transport them deep into the nest, and then start their new "profitable" life.
But this "detrimental" is relatively mild; more vicious parasitic behavior can leave you stunned. Another ant-loving beetle, the cryptopter beetle, has evolved powerful glands in its abdomen that are not only attractive to ants; they also act like drugs, causing ants to have psychedelic effects.
Worker ants will let down their guard and insanely transport all the young ants out of the "nursery". At this time, the beetles show their hideous faces and hunt for unresisting young ants. Curiously, the worker ants not only do not stop it; they also take good care of the beetles. In this way, the nest, under the influence of psychedelics, became a chaotic world. The absolute reduction of juvenile ants eventually led to the demise of the nest.
Of course, there are also peaceful ant-loving beetles that visit the nest. A beetle of the family Pylocarpus, they come to the nest entirely in search of a warm, moist shelter.
In order to avoid being expelled by ants, once they find a suitable environment in the nest, they will bury themselves very cutely, rarely come out, and are a peaceful and harmless guy.
In fact, there are thousands of known ant-loving beetles in the world, and in order to survive in the special environment of the ant nest, they have developed a variety of adaptive strategies in the long process of evolution. What is described here is only the tip of the iceberg, and the complexity of the ant world is far beyond our imagination.