Insects Which Mimic Ants But Are Not Ants

Thursday, Aug 27, 2020, 6:52 pm

By:Tony Williams

1.Velvet ants

Believe it or not, but this is actually a wasp that pretends it is an ant and you have to admit that it is pretty confusing. Of course it does this for the sake of prey, but it is amazing to think that nature has evolved to such an extent that this kind of thing goes on in the first place.

2.Tephritid fly

This fly is actually quite cool because it has ant like markings on its wings as you can see in this picture. It is believed that this is a defensive thing and that if it is being attacked it flaps its wings and it looks like ants running around and this scares off the potential predator.

3.Snails

How can a snail imitate an ant? This is a question that will be going through your mind right now, but it is limited to one particular snail called Allopeas myrmekophilos. What this does is it manages to make its shell look like the egg of a particular type of ant, so it encourages ants to carry it back to their nest so it can then get eating them.

4.Treehoppers

When you look at one of these insects you do wonder how any of them could go and imitate ants, but they are certainly capable of doing this. The coolest way is that one of them has managed to evolve a bit on its back so it looks like an ant and the idea here is to draw in things it can then eat.

5.Stilt legged flies

Some of these flies will spend their time trying their best to imitate ants and indeed there are a few that kind of share some similar characteristics with the way they look. However, the biggest problem is that they do tend to have longer legs, so that is going to help you see that they are indeed flies.

6.Beetles

There are some beetles out there that will try and replicate what ants are doing and this is simply to try and ward off potential predators. However, there are also some that get into the actual ants nest and try to copy what is going on and live off them.

7.Hemiptera

There are between 50,000 and 80,000 species of this bug and indeed a number of them manage to both look and act like ants. A key one is called the assassin bug because when they are young they hang around in groups to make them look like a colony of ants.

8.Mites

Mites are quite cool in that they will latch onto ants themselves in order to absorb some of the goodness that they are picking up and it just makes their life a whole lot easier. They are, however, absolutely microscopic, so you will not see this happening, but it does so just believe it.

9.Giant prickly stick insect

The main thing that happens here is when they are born because they are then quite susceptible to predators. What they then go and do is that they look like spider ants and the idea is that any bird that hates them will go nowhere near them and it increases their chances of being able to actually develop into a fully grown insect.

10.Praying Mantids

The Asian ant mantis is an insect that you could easily mistake for a real ant until you get nice and close to it and see that it really is not the case at all. The idea here is that it stops as many predators from being attracted to them, so at least there is a good reason for it.

11.Thrips

A species called Franklinothrips has been seen mimicking an ant both in its appearance as well as what it is doing. The fact that other species just focus on destroying crops does make it rather peculiar as to why they would go and do that in the first place.

12.Spiders

Believe it or not, but there are some species of spiders that do indeed mimic the action of ants. There are also a couple of species where they carry around the heads of dead ants to mimic them further and to disguise themselves as an ant and that thought is certainly very creepy indeed.

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