Fascinating BBC footage of geckos coaxing leafhoppers to feed them honeydew. The lizards tap their feet or bob their heads, and the insect dutifully tosses them a bead of delicious tree sap. This definitely qualifies as bizarre zoology.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Before I start, allow me to announce that Tet Zoo merchandise is now available! So far, I've only used the Tet Zoo logo for these products, but I might produce additional designs in time.
Anyway... welcome to another article in the Tet Zoo gekkotan series. I really want to get through to the end…
A guest entry, graciously granted by Secular Humanist warrior queen Felicia of Life Before Death, with her own photograph.
As I start writing this post*, the air has an autumn tang to it, it is windy, and definitely not as warm as it could be in August. And yet, the bees are working. There's…
You really don't want to be an enemy of the aphids - two papers today! The first is quite straightforward:
Aphids Make 'Chemical Weapons' To Fight Off Killer Ladybirds:
Cabbage aphids have developed an internal chemical defence system which enables them to disable attacking predators by setting…
In the previous few gekkotan articles we looked at the seriously weird and highly distinctive leaf-tailed geckos of Madagascar. There's another group of especially unusual, highly notable gekkonid gekkotans I want to write about: the flying, gliding or parachute geckos (Ptychozoon) of south-east…
Maybe they saved them a bunch of money on their car insurance?
Seriously though, this has to be some form of symbiosis, what's the leafhopper getting out of this deal? I couldn't tell from the video (as it's hard to make out the leafhopper), but in at least one of those shots it looked like the gecko was standing on top of the leafhopper, so maybe the leafhoppers are just paying the geckos to get off of them.
i imagine the evolutionary subtitles go something like this:
gecko: "okay, i can see you there, leafhopper, despite the subtle camouflage... now i can eat you and take you out of the gene pool or you can cough-up a little honeydew, capiche?"
leafhopper: "deal"
The leafhoppers really have some impressive camouflage. I wouldn't have known they were there if they weren't moving.
Could it be that the leafhopper is giving away extra sugars that it doesn't need? Maybe other animals could detect the sugar trail that a leafhopper might leave behind if it didn't feed geckos, basically pointing them in the direction of a tasty insect. The fact that it is camouflaged so well could be an indication that the gecko feeding behavior may be simply another form of camouflage, in that the leafhopper needs a way to live without attracting predators. After all, such perfect camouflage is an indication that this insect has a vested interest in hiding out in the open.
Yah, it's getting rid of excess sugars - the tree sap it's sucking at contains far more sugar than the insect can use, so after filtering out the salts, protiens ansd as much sugar as it actually needs, most sap-sucking insects have a lot of honeydew left over to get rid of. Some of them spray it a fair distance too (probably so they can't be tracked down quite so easily - it's bit fast in the video, but these ones seem to fire the blob of honeydew with some force)
evimtaÅ Yah, it's getting rid of excess sugars - the tree sap it's sucking at contains far more sugar than the insect can use, so after filtering out the salts, protiens ansd as much sugar as it actually needs, most sap-sucking insects have a lot of honeydew left over to get rid of. Some of them spray it a fair distance too (probably so they can't be tracked down quite so easily - it's bit fast in the video, but these ones seem to fire the blob of honeydew with some force)