Beetles Seduce Bees to Survive

I kid you not.

I was on the discovery channel website, watching their 'Pandacam' (a webcam inside the panda cage...) and I was a bit bored, because the panda was just sleeping, so my eyes started to drift around the rest of the page. An interesting headline caught my eye: 'Beetles Seduce Bees to Survive'. I clicked on the link, and it sent me to an article by someone called Jennifer Viegas who apparently works for Discovery News.

Heres what she said:

Sept. 12, 2006 — Clusters of blister beetle larvae mimic female bees in an act of deception so successful that male bees try to mate with them and bring them back to the nest. There the larvae live in the lap of bee luxury by receiving free food and shelter, according to a new study.
Scientists believe the behavior is the first known example of cooperative, aggressive mimicry among insects. Cooperation is involved since the larvae stack up on top of each other and work as a unit to mimic just one female bee. The act is aggressive because,
once in the bee’s nest, the sneaky parasites either eat the egg or the bees' hard-won food.

I promise I'm not making it up. You can read the rest of the article here: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/09/12/beetle_ani.html?category=animals&guid=20060912100030&&clik=news_tkr


Do you think seductive mimicry would work for me?!