Gamut of emotions?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Gamut of emotions?

3. Blood-sucking ants

Count Dracula isn’t the only creature with a taste for bodily fluids: The tiny, endangered Adetomyrma ant from Madagascar drinks the fluids of its own young. After the queen ant gives birth to her larvae, she and the other worker ants gnaw holes in the larvae and suck out the circulatory system fluid known as haemolymph (the insect equivalent of blood). Luckily, the baby ants survive this so-called nondestructive cannibalism, but it can’t be very pleasant. It’s not clear why the behavior exists, but transferring fluids may be a form of social behavior in the ants, scientists say.

4. Monkey baby killers

Some animals head off motherhood before it starts, to spare their babies undue hardship after they’re born. When a male gelada baboon takes over a breeding group from a previous male, he usually kills any babies of the former union. To prevent the bloodshed, pregnant female geladas will often spontaneously have a miscarriage. The phenomenon was first discovered in 1959 in mice, by biologist Hilda Bruce, and is known as the Bruce effect. It has since been reported in other rodent species, but was not known to exist outside the lab until scientists observed it in geladas.

5. Spider cannibals

The female Stegodyphus spider is the ultimate selfless mother. She watches over her egg cocoon until her babies hatch, at which point she starts regurgitating most of her meals to feed her offspring. Once the babies are about a month old, mommy spider rolls onto her back, letting her babies climb aboard. There, they inject venom and digestive enzymes into their mother to kill her, and subsequently feast on the remains. Before leaving the nest, some of the ravenous babies cannibalize each other….