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RE: Rooftop monsters / Dachmonster
Assassin bugs are really cool, one species has figured out how to fool spiders by gently tapping on their web to mimic a small insect struggling, then they assassinate the spider when it rushes out :) Another species of assassin bug glues the corpses of ants it kills onto its body, but only ant corpses and not any of the other kinds of bugs it kills. Kinda gruesome but awesome.
Loved seeing all these glimpses into the bug-scale world, macro photography is so awesome in that regard :) Great post! Cheers
Thanks!
Never heard of that ant-gluing assassin bug. Will check it out.
Edit: Already found it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthaspis_petax
Looks crazy. Hard to believe that's effective.
I read a study that tested the efficacy of ants vs. other insects in lab setting and the assassin bugs that had either nothing glued on or other bugs besides ants were something like 90% more likely to be preyed on by the spiders than the assassin bugs with ants glued on their back. This kind of stuff is fascinating to me :)
Last night I watched a BBC video which showed that ants really don't attack such an assassin bug. Interesting.