Animals have all sorts of bizarre adaptations
to get stuff done, whether that’s finding enough to eat, wooing a mate, or raising their
offspring. But some species have figured out shortcuts
to make things a little easier for themselves. These five animals and one plant take advantage
of other organisms, co-opting mating rituals and interspecies partnerships for their own
ends. In other words, they cheat. [1. The slaty flowerpiercer] Plants can’t just sprout legs to move around
and look for mates – they’re rooted in place. So that means their ability to reproduce usually
depends on luring in pollinators, which, as you might’ve guessed, pick up pollen from
a flower on one plant and deposit it in a flower on another. Flowers have a lot of tricks to attract these
pollinators, like bright colors, sweet smells, and a sugary liquid called nectar. Insects, hummingbirds, and even bats, stick
their faces into flowers to drink up some sweet, sweet nectar, and get pollen all over
themselves in the process. But some animals, known as nectar robbers,
have developed sneaky tactics that let them get a reward without actually helping the
plant. One such thief is the slaty flowerpiercer,
a small bird from Central America that perches on a plant’s stem and uses its hooked beak
to make a hole in the base of a flower. Then, it extracts the nectar with its tongue,
never touching the flower’s anthers, where the pollen is. This burglary works on all kinds of flowers,
giving the birds an extra advantage: flexibility. Pollinators usually have to specialize to
nab nectar, with a beak or probosces that fit certain flower shapes and sizes. Flowerpiercers, though, can puncture any flower
they want, to get the tastiest food. So the plants face a complicated evolutionary
dilemma: On the one hand, they need to defend themselves
against nectar robbers, like by diluting their nectar to make it less appealing. But their nectar needs to be sweet enough
so pollinators, like hummingbirds, don’t lose interest. For now, at least, flowerpiercers’ breaking-and-entering
M.O. keeps them well-fed in the tropical forests of Costa Rica and Panama. [2. Cleaner wrasse] For slaty flowerpiercers, the reward for cheating
is a sweet sweet nectar. For a fish called the cleaner wrasse, it’s
sweet sweet mucus. Cleaner wrasse are small, striped fish found
in coral reefs. They make their living by providing a service
for the reef’s other residents. Fish come to spots known as cleaning stations,
and let the wrasse pick off and eat the parasites on their skin. The cleaner wrasse gets an easy meal, and
the other fish gets its pesky parasites removed. But some cleaner wrasse also cheat their customers. In addition to munching on parasitic crustaceans,
wrasse will sneak bites of the protective mucus coating that covers their customers’
scales. In lab experiments where cleaner wrasse were
given a choice between plates of parrotfish mucus and plates of parasites, the wrasse
actually preferred the nutritious mucus. In the wild, though, fish won’t visit the
cleaning stations of wrasse who cheat frequently, so wrasse have an incentive to behave themselves
to keep the easy meals coming. Cleaner wrasse also tend to work in pairs,
and a cheater will often be punished by its partner, who doesn’t want to lose all of
its clients to this bad behavior. If one partner sneaks a bite of mucus and
the customer fish storms away, the other partner will aggressively chase the cheater, which
is fish for, “hey, cut that out.” So if you’re a fish on a reef looking for
a good delousing, steer clear of cleaner wrasse swimming solo. [3. The brown-headed cowbird] Passing your genes onto another generation
takes a lot of work. You have to feed your offspring, shelter them,
and protect them from predators. But some crafty birds have figured out a way
around the labors of parenthood. Why spend weeks raising your chicks when you
can just dump your eggs in another bird’s nest and let them do it for you? This is called brood parasitism, and the most
infamous cheating bird in North America is the brown-headed cowbird. Because she doesn’t have to spend any time
or energy raising her young, a female cowbird can produce a lot of eggs – as many as three
dozen in a single summer. She lays each of those eggs in other songbird
nests, sneaking them in at just the right time so that they’ll be accepted by the
host and incubated. Once a cowbird chick hatches, it will sometimes
act like a little assassin and roll the other eggs out of the nest, eliminating competition
for its foster parents’ attention. And even if that doesn’t happen, cowbird
chicks tend to grow faster than those of their host species. That lets them bully their smaller nestmates
out of their share of the food… so, watch out step-brothers and sisters. Songbird chicks unlucky enough to have a cowbird
foster sibling rarely survive long enough to leave the nest. This situation has created an evolutionary
arms race. If a host bird realizes it has a brood parasite
egg in its nest, it’ll dump the intruder before it hatches. So many parasitic birds have evolved to produce
eggs that look almost exactly like those of their hosts. In turn, hosts have gotten better and better
at recognizing the imposter eggs for what they are. But the brown-headed cowbird may have an unfair
advantage in this fight... thanks to humans. Cowbirds like brushy habitat and woodland
edges, which crop up as we bulldoze forests to make room for more houses. For songbirds already facing habitat loss,
it’s a one-two punch – even if they can find a decent spot to nest, they might find
themselves raising a monster. [4. Satellite frogs] A lot of male frogs and toads use sound to
attract mates. Every spring, they gather in ponds and marshes
at night and sing their mating calls. The ladies listen to their options and go
for the males with the longest, loudest, or fastest calls. It’s a good system, because great calls
take a lot of effort to produce. So males who manage it are probably tough
and well-fed, which might give their offspring a genetic edge. But in some frog species, a few males cheat
and use a strategy that lets them find a mate without making a single croak. These satellite males will wait quietly near
a male whose call is top-notch. Then, when a female approaches to check out
the really studly male, a sneaky satellite male swoops in and mates with her instead
of the actual caller. Some male frogs switch back and forth between
calling and being a satellite, depending on who else is in the pond. Experiments with European tree frogs, for
example, found that males were more likely to resort to satellite tactics if they were
small, which probably made it harder to make really attractive calls. But these frogs also listened to the calls
around them, and if they decided that the competition wasn’t so hot either, they’d
start croaking again too. [5. Femme fatale fireflies] For another case of mating going wrong, at
least for some participants, take a look at fireflies. Fireflies use specific patterns of flashes
to find mates. Each species has its own unique code, which
helps prevent accidental interspecies hook-ups. But one genus of fireflies co-opted this system
for more nefarious purposes. Female Photuris fireflies mimic the flashes
of females from another genus, the Photinus fireflies. When the femme fatales attract these other
guys, they kill and eat them. But there’s more to this than just an easy
meal. See, their victims have special chemicals
in their blood called lucibufagins, but we’ll just call them LBGs. These compounds are steroids, similar to toxins
found in some species of toad. When these fireflies feel threatened by predators
like spiders and birds, they excrete droplets of LBG-filled blood, called “reflex bleeding,”
to say, “I’m gross! Don’t eat me!” And femme fatale fireflies can’t produce
these defensive chemicals themselves – they have to eat their more chemically-gifted cousins
to get this added protection. A group of researchers from Cornell University
figured all this out using a clever series of experiments. They captured both types of fireflies and
measured the LBG levels in femme fatale Photuris fireflies before and after feeding them Photinus
males. They also tried feeding different fireflies
to jumping spiders, confirming that the spiders wouldn’t eat insects with high levels of
LBGs in their blood. So black widows aren’t the only dangerous
ladies out there, Photuris fireflies give them a run for their money. [6. Empty orchids] Now, nature isn’t only full of animals that
cheat. Plants do it, too. The slaty flowerpiercer may take advantage
of flowers for their nectar, but an orchid in southern Africa has flipped the script,
. Remember how some insects specialize in pollinating
a specific plant? That’s thanks to coevolution. Over time, the plant gets really good at attracting
and rewarding a specific species of insect, and the insect gets really good at pollinating
that kind of plant. That’s the case for a plant in southern
Africa called Z. microsiphon, which produces long, tube-shaped flowers. It’s pollinated by a single species of fly
with a very long proboscis that lets it reach deep into the narrow flower to sip its nectar. Both organisms benefit – the fly gets a
meal, and the plant gets pollinated and can reproduce. But a second plant species is taking advantage
of this partnership. In some areas where Z. microsiphon lives,
there’s a rare orchid that grows alongside it. The flowers of the orchid look suspiciously
similar to Z. microsiphon’s – long, tube-shaped, pink and white. The orchid will even go so far as to mimic
the slight variations in Z. microsiphon’s flowers to match its specific neighborhood. But the flowers of the orchid are dry: there’s
no nectar to be found. It’s all a deception – the orchid attracts
the other flower’s pollinators without putting any resources into producing nectar. So if you’re one of those people who peeked
when you were “it” during hide-and-seek, or you just can’t resist using cheat codes
to skip levels in games... you might have a new excuse. You’re just the latest in a big group of
cheaters in nature, who are all in it to win it – even at the expense of others. Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow,
which was brought to you by our patrons on Patreon. If you want to help support this show, just
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