Nerd Moment- Coevolution is awesome

DRIVER ANTS ATTACKING A GRASSHOPPER

So I am watching the science channel while I do orgo problems (because I am such a cool kid). The first show was called Ant Wars. It was about a colony of driver ants. It was of course horrifying for me but so cool! The mating males are HUGE and have to walk up to the entry of the nest and pass the inspection of the worker ants. If they approve him as a mate for the queen the bite off his wings and carry him to her. After he mates they eat him. ewww. There was also a "war" between the forager/raider ants and a colony of termites. It was very feudal/castle seige-y especially with the dramatic music and commentary. The termites built a wall between the ants and the queen to save her. How nobel.

Did anybody else play the SimAnt computer game? Where the black ants fight the red ants to try and take over the yard? I wonder if you can still buy that. I would be into that.

Now I am watching Life in the Undergrowth with David Attenborough. Arthropods are crazy! There is this one spider that puts a sticky glob on the end of a long strand of silk. When a moth flies by it identifies the species and produces a species specific pheremone to get the moth to fly closer. It then swings the silk over its head and lassos the moth to eat it. How bad ass is that?!
There is also this bug from Australia called a Feather Leg Bug that has this really fluffy legs that it waves at ants passing by. It also produces an ant pheremone from a gland on the bottom of its abdomen. The bug lets the ants crawl all over him looking for the gland until it rears up to expose the gland. The ant trys to taste the gland and in doing so perfectly positions its head for the feather leg bug to stab it with a proboscus and suck out their guts. That is so fucked up.
There is also a bug that makes balls of larve on branches that look like and smell like a female bee. So a male bee comes up and tries to mate with it but instead gets caked in these parasites. He then goes off and mates with a real female and they all jump ship onto her. She then goes and lays her eggs with her pollen stash and they eat all of the pollen and the eggs.
Or how about the caterpilar that smells like an ant larvae that hangs out in an ant colony for over a year getting fed, cleaned and protected by the ants. But then this wasp wants to lay its eggs in that specific kind of caterpillar so it flys in and releases a pheremone that makes the ants attack each other. It just walks right in and injects its eggs into this caterpillar, which continues to get protected by the ants. The wasp hatches out of the caterpillar and leaves. The wasp can tell the difference between an ant larvae and a caterpillar but the ants can't. Nobody knows how the wasp can tell.

That is such a complicated fucking life cycle! But I like it because it dupes the ants. Ha, suckers..
Wow, I shouldn't blog on study buddies

ok back to orgo? Maybe a shower first