Butterfly - a super-scammer

Butterfly Maculina rebeli.Photo: lycos.nl.

Butterflies hover around and seem to be very carefree with life. But scientists have discovered a butterfly that knows how to trick ants into feeding their babies.

In the larval stage, Maculina rebeli butterflies in Europe release an odor similar to the ant's larvae, which helps them to forgive them. When she became a pup, Maculina rebeli was offered food by the worker. Not only that, they also found a way to be treated in a special mode.

The entomologists of Oxford University (UK) found that the queen ants always create subtle sounds to the worker ants recognize them. Butterflies Maculina rebeli learn how to simulate those sounds, so that if the ants get into trouble they will be saved by the worker first.

As they entered a period of scarcity of food, experts saw worker ants killing their larvae as food for the butterfly pupae because they thought it was a queen.

In nature, real queens and butterflies never meet because they are not in the same place in the nest. To see what happens when the queen and larvae meet, the scientists put a Maculina rebeli larva into a cavity in the nest along with worker ants and 4 queens. Immediately after discovering the larvae, the queen ants immediately attacked the impostor, but the worker ants intervened. They bite and burn and drag the ants to another place, while some worker ants protect butterfly larvae.