Don’t Cross Me!
I get tired of my ant friends pretty quickly. They don’t really love having me around and it makes me feel pretty awful about myself… I mean, I made them so much prettier by extending my phenotype (Beros et al., 2015) and giving them a red butt and all, how ungrateful are they?! Unlucky for them, though, I am pretty good at revenge so I manipulate their minds by causing their ventral nerve cords to atrophy (Yanoviak et al., 2008). This causes them to be more sluggish, less aggressive when handled and it even reduces the amount of pheromones they create to warn their friends of danger (Yanoviak et al., 2008)!
I know that sounds mean, but I did say I was good at revenge—on top of all of that, I manipulate them into finding a patch of berries and dancing with me so birds will notice them easier (Poulin, 2013). This is necessary because birds normally avoid them since they taste kind of bad, so when I trick the bird by making my ant “friends” look like berries, they get eaten (Yanoviak et al., 2008)! When the ants are full of me and my siblings, their gaster breaks off easier anyway, making it an easy treat for the birds! All of this is perfect for letting me move on from all the hate and hang out with my bird friends! I know, I know, I’m a manipulative parasite (Lefèvre, 2009), what can I say, I’m a Gemini?
