Chapter 1 THE MASTER Assassin bug Acanthaspis petax a k a the Corpse Collector THE DISGUISE A big backpack of dead ants WHERE CAN YOU FIND IT Africa Malaysia and the Philippines An ant hurries over the rocky ground It pauses beside a dark pebble to clean a bit of dust off its antenna Unfortunately for the ant this is the last thing it will ever do Because what looks like a pebble is actually an assassin bug in disguise The bug strikes so quickly that its movements are a blur It grabs the ant with powerful front legs Then it plunges its needlelike mouth into the ant’s body and injects a paralyzing poison laced with digestive juice The ant dies almost instantly The bug waits a moment to give the
digestive juice a chance to work Then it sucks out the ant’s liquefied insides leaving little more than an empty shell That empty shell might not seem like something worth keeping But the assassin bug’s table scraps are the key to its disguise Using its hind legs the bug heaves the dead ant up onto its back to join at least a dozen other dead ants already there The bodies of the deceased are all stuck together thanks to a are all stuck together thanks to a sticky substance that oozes from sticky substance that oozes from the bug’s back The assassin the bug’s back The assassin bug hides under this pile of dead ants which it wears like a dead ants which it wears like a big bulging backpack With its latest victim glued With its latest victim glued into place the assassin bug goes back to hunting It resumes its post beside the path that the ants are using to travel to and from their nest No doubt another ant will nest No doubt another ant will be along shortly Chances are be along shortly Chances are good that it too will be fooled good that it too will be fooled by the assassin bug’s bizarre by the assassin bug’s bizarre camouflage and will become part camouflage and will become part of it as well This extreme close-up shows an assassin bug’s This extreme close-up shows an assassin bug’s proboscis the mouthpart it uses to inject ants proboscis the mouthpart it uses to inject ants with paralyzing poison The rounded blue with paralyzing poison The rounded blue colored structures are the bug’s eyes colored structures are the bug’s eyes 7
The Science behind the Story Wearing its coat of many corpses a young Acanthaspis petax can easily be mistaken for something harmless Ants the bug’s favorite prey are very often tricked and wander within striking distance But does this assassin bug’s disguise do double duty Does it help the bug hide from its predators as well as its prey Robert Jackson and Simon Pollard from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch New Zealand thought it might They designed a clever experiment to find out Jackson and Pollard set up several glass-walled cages in their laboratory and put jumping spiders in them Jumping spiders eat assassin bugs Jumping spiders were just about ideal as predators to use in these experiments said Jackson They have fantastically good eyesight and are easy to raise in captivity They are also friendly and harmless to people Jumping spiders are skilled hunters that attack by leaping onto their prey 8
Next the scientists added a number of A petax assassin bugs to the cages They let some of the bugs keep their dead-ant disguises but removed the disguises from other bugs leaving them naked What happened The jumping spiders attacked the naked assassin bugs ten times more often than the bugs wearing disguises It took the spiders just a matter of minutes to recognize naked bugs as prey since they looked like something edible rather than a confusing mound said Pollard This was solid evidence that using dead ants as camouflage does protect A petax assassin bugs from predators at least from jumping spiders And the ant disguise might not just fool predators It might actively repel them A petax assassin bugs kill and eat several kinds of insects but they typically stack only dead ants on their backs Is there something special about ant corpses that make the bug’s disguise more effective Ants are avoided by many predators said Jackson They tend to be unpalatable as a meal and they can be dangerous Some can sting and many have chemical defenses A petax assassin bugs can carry as many as twenty dead ants on their backs at one time 9
