Ichneumon Wasp - I Bow to thee!

 

The story of ichneumon wasp

 

Read this about wasps - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichneumon_wasp

 

Last night, we saw a DVD(Life in the Undergrowth, produced by BBC, David Attenborough) about insects and were shocked to learn the story of this wasp. So check this out...

 

It all begins with the blue butterfly in Europe. In Spring, the blue butterflies mate and their eggs are laid on leaves of plants which hatch into caterpillars and drop off to the ground. The funny thing about caterpillars are they emit a chemical called pheromones whose smell makes a very strange thing happen – the pheromones are intentionally meant to confuse the ants - which think that it is one of their own and take it back to their nests and clean it and take good care of them. These caterpillars are so smart they even make the same noises as ant larvae so they can be fed by the ants...the oblivious ants feed them for as long as it takes.

 

In a typical meadow, there are upto 100 ant hills and guess what...The story of ichneumon wasp starts here. Ichneumon pronounced as ick-new-mon, knows the exact ant-nest where the caterpillars are being taken care off - they enter the ant-nest and as you can imagine, the ants realize the wasp has arrived and start attacking it wildly. The wasp produces a pheromone which causes a bizarre thing to happen - the equivalent of "maya" or magic - the ants start attacking each other instead of the intruder. The wasp proceeds to the rooms where the eggs are being protected and finds the caterpillar and injects an egg into each one of them and having achieved its objective, it takes off.

The ants regain their composure and go back to tending to their own and the caterpillars. In due course of time, the caterpillars form the Chrysalis and enter the last stage of metamorphosis…all along being taken care of by the ants. The blue butterfly eventually comes out and heads out into the open to begin its adult life. Soon after, the ichneumon wasp too comes out of the chrysalis having gotten a safe ride through the seasons and food from the host which was the host of the poor ants J.

 

Last night, we were totally shocked to see this exploitation and deception and double deception to see among insects

and we tend to beat our fellow humans for showing lack of morality and character. The wonders of creation, lust for life and the complex intricacies – all showed in this fine example from 3 different species…so much to learn!

 

Another note about the DVD, “the silk spinners” from DVD-1 is mind blowing. Especially the piece about the Gladiator spiders and Bolas spiders…chilling to say it in 1 word. In DVD-2, “intimate relations”, yet another spider + wasp story…where the spider is aware of and does nothing to get rid of its guest…which returns the favour by injecting the spider with a hormone which makes it go loopy and loose its core-competencies, web making and spinning silk. Bizarre, huh? There is also the piece about ants and trees co-operating…a must-see!