Digging traps for sneak attacks, and you ca n’t eat it, ants: Do your parents know you are so bad?

Maybe you often see this small pit on the side of the road -their shapes are like funny fighting, even if the flexible ant accidentally falls in, it is difficult to climb out. What secrets are hidden in these small pit? Why does the seemingly flat sand pit become the hell of ants?

The funnel -shaped pit in the sand, mysterious ant hell (picture source: phoenixpestControltn.com)

I believe many friends have guess the answer to the question. Yes, a magical insect is hidden at the bottom of the small pit in the sand dunes. They are called AntLION, which are larvae of ants. The ant lion is good at digging a trap in the sandy land. It mainly eats ants. The stability of the hunting is comparable to the lion, so it is named an ant lion.

Only a magical hunter who does not excrete

When it comes to ant lions, many people may feel strange, but when they mention their aliases, such as sand monkeys, sand cows, and ground cows, many people's memories will be evoked. When I was a kid, there were not many toys, and the children caught insects everywhere. Whatever they knew, the heavenly cow and the turtle were accompanied by the children's beautiful childhood memories.

In addition to these bugs above, ant lions are also good for children. As long as you find the "small funnel" in the sand, find a fine grass, stir in a few times in the funnel, the Ant Lion will hold the grass. At this time, as long as they are mentioned lightly, they will show their "true face of Lushan."

Ant -lion with hairy hair (picture source: rhinorest.com)

The ant lion has about the size of soybeans, with a hair all over, with a big belly, and a pair of sickle -like big palate that looks very fierce. To be honest, the appearance of ant lions is really not good -looking, but compared to the ants and lions in the larvae period, their adults ants are much more elegant. The slender body has two pairs of transparent membrane long wings, unfamiliar with familiarity with, and unfamiliar. People may treat them as relatives of Dou Niang or Dragonfly.

Ants (picture source: mdc.mo.gov)

There are huge differences in the form of larvae and adults in insects. This form of development is called perverted development. Antica belongs to the complete perverted development in perverted development. After 4 stages of life: eggs, larvae, pupae, and adults.

Antica takes at least one year to complete a generation in nature. Generally, the summer eggs hatch into larvae, keep your own trap hunt, accumulate nutrition, and wait for the summer to turn into adults. However, some species need to accumulate longer. It may not be able to complete a generation from two to three years.

The life cycle of ants and lions (picture source: Wikipedia)

Everyone may not have thought that during the larvae period from this year to three years, the larvae of ants, also known as ant lions, only eat and excrete. Because the ant lions have no anus, the food residues are accumulated at the end of the intestine, and when the feather becomes an adult, it is excreted in the form of fetal manure.

For such a long time, who is not excreted, who may not be able to stand it. In order to make themselves feel better, the ant lion also has its own unique method of reducing food residues, that is, only the juice of the prey instead of eating the body of the prey. Specifically, the ants and lions will pierce the jaw tube into the prey, and inject digestive enzymes, digest it into delicious juice, and then suck.

Not only that, the method of predation of ants and lions also makes it possible for it to "overeating". I often eat and do n’t go down. If you do n’t eat too much, the accumulated waste is naturally less. Moreover, ant lions have evolved strong hunger resistance. The experimental results proved that the ant lion could endure 100 days without eating, which was really surprising.

However, compared to the characteristics of ants and lions, it is more curious about how the ant lion may dig in the trap for hunting?

Ant hell in the sand dunes

After the Ant Lion is born, a funnel -like trap will be dug in the sand, and he hides at the bottom of the trap and is waiting for the prey to fall into the trap. Out of sand, shoot the small bugs down to the bottom of the trap and complete the hunting.

Ant lion hidden at the bottom of the trap (picture source: rhinorest.com)

Having said so much, let's watch a video of ant lions hunting ants together first, see how the ants fell into the trap of the ant lion, and were finally clamped by the ant lion's jaw.

ants fall into the trap of ant lion (video source: reference literature)

In the video, an ant accidentally fell into a small sand pit. At this time, it didn't realize what happened next, and wanted to climb out of the sand pit. Suddenly, a group of sand was thrown at the bottom of the sand pit, and the ant was shot down to the bottom of the sand pit. It tried to get out of the sand pit, but there was a big mouth bite the ant ...

Do you be curious, and in various complex terrain like ants, why do you slide under your feet in this funnel -shaped trap and fall into the bottom of the trap?

The answer is actually hidden in the "sand throwing" skills of the ant lion. Scientists have found that in the process of long -term evolution, Ant Lion has evolved a complicated trap mining strategy. According to related research, when the ants and lions are built, they will classify the sand according to the size of the particle size by throwing the sand. This active classification behavior makes the slope surface of the ant lion trap be covered with fine sand grains. More stronger, the slope of the trap will become unstable, which makes the prey "a long time hate."

The distribution of large particles (red) and small particles (blue) in the ant lion trap (picture source: reference literature)

While this unstable structure increases the success of hunting, it is also easy to deform due to the struggle of the prey. Therefore, the ant lion will also perform regular maintenance through the sand throwing behavior. On the one hand, the angle of the trap's slope can be eased, the prey is easy to escape, and on the other hand, it can also prevent them from being buried by the sand sliding down on the slope.

I have to say that the ant lion is really a "mechanical master" who is proficient in physics, but when the ants are facing the ant lion, they are not completely back.

Escape from the birth of the birth of the lower jaw bomb

Although the trap's trap hunting is very high, it is not unfavorable. When an ant called a trap and jaw ant accidentally mistakenly entered the trap, one of their skills can make them escape from the "lion mouth" greatly increased greatly. Essence

Yes, trap jaws depend on their huge jaws.

In the past 100 years, people are curious about the magical jaw of the trap jaw ant. Their jaws can be closed quickly, and the speed can even reach 60 meters per second. Unlike the trap of ants and lions, the huge jaws of the trap jaw ants are the traps they have inherently. When their jaw opens, it is like a mouse clip. As long as the prey passes from the mouth, the trap jaw ant will closely close the fiercely close Bite the prey.

The trap jaw ants open the big jaw and wait for the prey to come to the door (picture source: tapataLk.com)

When the identity is converted from a hunter to a prey, the big jaw of the trap jaw ant can help escape. By bouncing, let yourself jump out of the Longtan tiger hole.

In 2015, a paper published in the journal "Public Science Library" studied the success rate of trap and jaw ants through the closure of the jaw to escape. Scientists use glue to confuse the ant's mouth, and then let them go to the ants of the ant lion to explore, and compare them with the trap and jaw ants that have not been confused to understand the role of the jaw bouncing.

The mouth of the trap and jaw ants was confused (picture source: reference literature)

The experimental results show that the trap and jaw ant can indeed help them ejected to the sand pit through closed jaws and get rid of the entanglement of the ants and lions. escape. Because not all at all times, the lower jaw will successfully jump the ants, the probability of success is less than 30%.

For example, in the video below, although the ants eventually jumped out of the trap through the jaw closed, before that successful jump, there was a loss once or twice, either did not jump or jump enough.

Ant jumps out of the trap of the ant lion through the jaw closed (source: reference).

I have to say that escape from the mouth is also a technical work. It is worth mentioning that when the jaw is stuck with glue, the probability of escape from the ant is almost halfway. It seems that the mouth is still big.

In fact, in the struggle between ants and ant lions, not all the ants and lions have won. In a few cases, the ant lion will be killed by the ant, or the jaw tube is broken by the ant. After all, there is often no absolute winner for the struggle for survival.

Produced: Popular Science China

Author: EVEE

Producer: China Science Popularization Expo

references:

Franks, N. R., Worley, A., Falkenberg, M., Sendova-Franks, A. B., & Christensen, K. (2019). Digging the optimum pit: antlions, spirals and spontaneous stratification. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 286( 1899), 20190365.

Büsse, S., Büscher, T. H., Heepe, L., Gorb, S. N., & Stutz, H. H. (2021). Sand-throwing behaviour in pit-building antlion larvae: insights from finite-element modelling. Journal of the Royal Society Interface , 18 (182), 20210539.

Larabee, F. J., & SUAREZ, a. V. (2015). Mandible-Powered Escape Jumps in Trap-Jaw ANTS Increase Survival Rates During Predator-Prey Encounter. Plos One, 10 (5), E0124871.

The China Science Popularization Expo is the Science Popular Science Platform of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is sponsored by the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Relying on the high -end scientific resources of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it is committed to spreading cutting -edge scientific knowledge and providing fun science and education services.

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