Insect Identity Theft

[Music] with your fake eyebrows in place you put on the wig and glasses voila you suddenly look just like your target you've been planning this for months spying on schedules and getting to know the employee you need to imitate they're out sick this morning and you grabbed their ID when you dropped off a care package now you should be able to get through building Security even though you wouldn't usually have [Music] access when pulling off a trick like this humans would mostly worry about how we look and if anyone will see us breaking the rules but imagine if we were doing the same thing in total darkness what other senses might be more important to getting through security with a fake ID for us the next most important might be our sense of hearing we might talk our way through security but for some other animals our less used senses might be the most important let's take ants as an example you mainly see them above ground but ants spend most of their lives underground away from the light their already poor eyesight becomes unnecessary in the dark tunnels of their underground nests if you close your eyes and imagine being an ant what senses do you think are most important in the dark hearing touch taste smell well for insects the most important sense is arguably smell insects don't have a nose like we do so some people might not describe it as smell but their ability to make and sense odor cues may be the most important sense that they have we call this sense for scent olfaction for some species you can think of their scent or the chemicals they carry on their outer surface as their ID card insects in their Community can tell who they are from these chemicals this ID becomes especially important for insects that live in large colonies these chemicals help them decide who belongs in the colony and who doesn't the chemicals called cuticular hydrocarbons or chc's are a part of the cuticle which is the outer layer of the exoskeleton of these insects the other insects around them can sense their chc's let's take a quick look at what exactly is doing the sensing here if you ever watched two ants greet each other you might notice that they touch their antenna together or inspect each other's bodies the antenna are where the odor sensing organs of insects are most often these organs called cila hold special cells that can pick up chemical signals and change them into nerve signals then those nerve signals are sent through the nervous system to the brain and the scent is registered okay back to our scent IDs being a able to sense who is a true Colony mate and who is not can come in handy in several situations this ability helps Colony insects to figure out if they are being attacked by other insects or if other insects are trying to live inside the colony secretly this can be a problem because insects that secretly enter the colony are usually trying to steal the colony's food or even their offspring so if a beetle or wasp has on their version of a wig and glasses which would be the scent of a specific Colony they could sneak inside without being detected to prevent this over time Colony species might evolve in a way that improves their ability to tell the difference between their scent and the scent of other insects even those with copycat chemicals but those other insects are also evolving if they can get a few easy meals by sneaking into the colony it will benefit them so over time some insect species might evolve to have a better fake ID that matches the ID scent of the colony this will help make sure they don't get caught in this way these insects are committing identity theft they have developed the same or similar chemicals in their cuticle that lets them pass as a colony member as the colony improves their ID scanners the identity thieves improve their fake IDs when this happens on an evolutionary scale it's often called an evolutionary arms race each each side improves their strategy to try to beat out the other one one improves and then the other improves to beat it then the other improves to beat it then well I think you get the point now there are times when a certain low level of identity theft will be tolerated by a colony they might do this instead of improving their strategy whether to tolerate or improve may depend on what the costs of the theft are for example if a little food is being stolen maybe it's not such a big deal but if the Invader is eating larae the future ant workers of the colony it may be a much bigger deal when risks get higher the arms race begins and Security will get higher too you can think of some human examples that work in the same way picture a small bank that works with customers who have hundreds to a few thousands of dollars the costs of a person stealing an identity is pretty low so a simple ID check along with a bank card may be enough to validate a customer's identi and give them access to funds but now picture a bank that deals with clients who take out millions or hundreds of millions of dollars at a time you might expect more strict ID checks they'd still look at an ID and bank card but they might also need to do an iris scan that uses eyes as a form of ID in turn the bank thieves would have to get smarter maybe they develop special contacts that can sometimes trick the iris scanner ant col colonies and their Invaders play the same game there's a trade-off if the ants use resources to develop a stronger threat detection system versus if they spend that same energy on Colony growth so the risks to Colony success must be high enough that the trade-off to making a stricter ID system makes sense when those risks are high this species of ant may end up in an evolutionary arms race with the thieves now with people if something seems wrong or if someone has been tricked humans might say that the situation smells fishy or just plain smells for these ants The evolutionary arms race can mean they have to get better at figuring out if something smells or is off about the chemicals around them if they do the copycats need to up their game because only the best copycat thieves will make it through this back and forth arms race is just one of the interesting ways that Evolution can happen and in this case of insect Evolution it can even happen right under our noses [Music]