Moving on to this interesting book of Crazy Evolution. It is not easy to have children, it is even more difficult to raise children, and many animal children cannot forage independently when they are first born. Like the mother of the broad-footed bag shrew we mentioned in the previous article, the mothers who can have a small bag to take the child with them are after all a minority, and most mothers themselves have to fight for survival and have no time to take care of the children, so they can only find a babysitter for the children. But how can I hire a babysitter? This is also a question of wisdom. Among the animals' countermeasures, the method of carving velvet cocoon bees is unique and terrifying.
The velvet cocoon bee is an insect that lives in the Americas and New Zealand, and it generally specializes in caterpillars as nannies. It injects eggs into the caterpillar's body, which can store up to 80 eggs in a caterpillar. These eggs grow into larvae inside the caterpillar's body, sucking the caterpillar's bodily fluids and thriving in the caterpillar's body. We don't know how the caterpillar with more than 80 bear children living in the body feels, but it still looks healthy, it should eat and drink, and it should exercise. When the bears are almost grown, they will burrow out through the caterpillar's outer skin. At this point, the caterpillar is completely out of skin.
Volunteer nannies are already interesting enough to get to this point, right? But that's not all. The larvae will use their molting shells to plug the caterpillar's wounds and keep the caterpillar alive. Don't get me wrong, this is not a reward, just because the nanny still has a lot of use.
The larvae don't all rush out of the caterpillar's body, and a few guys stay in the caterpillar's body. These guys will start the scariest scene of the story. They release special chemicals that manipulate the caterpillar's spirit, turning the caterpillar into violent zombies and acting as bodyguards for their siblings outside. Because the larvae outside have to complete the final step - pupalization - to reach adulthood. Such a critical step should not be disturbed, in case of "going into the fire" or being eaten by predators, it will be abandoned. Under the control of caterpillars, they will act as the "protector" of these larvae on the periphery, and even spit silk nets for them to weave barriers. In order to complete this task, the zombie caterpillar seems to have hit chicken blood, and its combat effectiveness has been greatly improved. These brainwashed caterpillars can drive away more than half of their predators, while a common caterpillar can generally drive away only 15% of enemies.
However, the ferocity of the caterpillar is only a return to the light of its life. As the larvae of the cocoon bee "pupate into a bee", the caterpillar is completely abandoned, and the nanny that has lost its controller will run out of oil - it has lost the ability to eat and can only starve to death.
The whole set of "witchcraft" that manipulates the mind is by no means innate, but has evolved over a long period of evolution. The authors speculate that in harsh environments, they may have initially only learned to inject eggs into caterpillars to improve the survival rate of larvae, and many bees still have the "please nanny" skill in this segment. But other mutated larvae may naturally dislike eating the caterpillar's main organs, which actually allows the caterpillar to protect and "feed" itself with its body for a longer period of time. Various mutations slowly accumulated, and finally the carved cocoon bee larvae practiced the "Soul Transfer Dafa" that manipulated the caterpillar's will, and the value of the caterpillar nanny was brought to the extreme.
The script of evolution has always been impartial, and no one in nature has honestly accepted his fate. Of course, caterpillars will not suffer a tragic fate all the time, and they have evolved defensive means. For example, there is a cat caterpillar from the Americas, called the "viper caterpillar". This caterpillar is covered with hair and looks quite cute, but in fact, its long hair is full of stingers. How poisonous are these stingers? Someone once stabbed him in the arm, and the pain was as if the chest cavity had collapsed, which showed how toxic it was. With this hand, the animals saw this caterpillar and walked around. Therefore, although the cat caterpillar is actually a larva, it does not need a babysitter at all, and it can grow into a worm by relying on a body of poison.
Digression: Reading can expand our knowledge boundaries and get more perspectives on problems, but blind obedience is not allowed...
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