WEBVTT - From the Vault: Do ants make traps? 0:00:06.360 --> 0:00:09.560 Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:12.879 name is Joe McCormick, and today we are bringing you 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:16.120 an episode from the Vault, an older episode of the show. 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:20.680 This one is called do Ants Make Traps? It is 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:25.640 about exactly that question, whether ants the insect build traps. 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:38.720 This originally published January twentieth, twenty twenty two. Hope you enjoy. 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:42.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.400 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:48.440 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:51.040 And I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to be 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:55.400 talking about traps. I think I've mentioned this in some 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:58.920 Weird House Cinema episodes, but for some reason, ever since 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:02.600 I was a little kid, I have always loved movie 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:06.639 scenes where the protagonists build a trap to use against 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:10.240 the villain or the monster. I remember, like Home Alone 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:13.160 when I was a little kid, that whole sequence was great. 0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:16.840 It sort of expands to fill my whole childhood impression 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:19.360 of what the movie was. And if you go back 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:21.240 and watch it as an adult, it's kind of weird 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:24.199 that it's only like fifteen or twenty minutes of the runtime. 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:27.400 In Home Alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does seem like 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:30.280 that's the main thing I remember. Yeah, they the traps, 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:33.960 the traps, and certainly people feel certain nostalgia for them. 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:38.240 My heart swells at the thought of a nail going 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:42.840 into Daniel Stearn's foot. But also, yeah, I remember other ones, 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:45.840 like you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger builds a bunch of traps 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:49.680 and predator. But like, this wasn't just when I was 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:52.160 a kid. It still works on me. I remember there 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:55.400 was a sequence I just loved in the more recent 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:58.640 horror movie It follows where the characters build a trap 0:01:58.680 --> 0:01:59.440 for the last year. 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.960 Yeah, that's right, that is very They have a very 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:06.400 much a kind of home alones setup that they do there. 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.160 Of course, it's not only the heroes that have traps. 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:11.560 I always love a good villain trap as well, especially 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:15.960 the trap door. And the trap door sequence is always 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:18.959 a lot of fun, you know. Be it something like 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.080 in Lynn Labyrinth. I love the trap when the trap 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:27.119 door springs on our hero and that. But actually Tomorrow's 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:29.799 Weird House Cinema also has a fun trap door sequence. 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:33.720 Oh yeah, so look forward to that. Well. 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:37.920 Yeah, on side of the protagonists getting through traps set 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:40.919 for them, another one of my favorite movie sequences as 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:43.320 a child was the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Art. 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:46.200 Oh yeah, and when INDI's going through all the traps, 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:48.600 something about it is just like, deep in the brain, 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:50.400 it's very satisfying. 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:54.840 Wall to wall traps. Yeah, that's that's a great sequence 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.240 as well. And all of these are great sequences in 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.440 spite of the fact that when you when you can, 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:03.800 when you really think long and hard about any of 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:08.400 these scenarios, you know, the cracks definitely show would all 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:11.480 of these traps still be working in this ancient ruin 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:14.919 that Indiana Jones finds himself in. I don't know, it's 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:16.560 a hard argument to make there, right. 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.079 How did the spring trap operate by you sticking your 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:23.000 hand through a shaft of light when it was made 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:24.600 like thousands of years ago? 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:28.080 Yeah, Or you know, if it's duke and predator, like, 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:31.399 how does he how does he make this super powerful 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:34.880 compound bow just in the space of a few hours 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:36.200 on an afternoon in the jungle. 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:38.120 That's just standard survival training. 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:42.040 I mean, and all these other various e Wok traps 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:44.440 that he builds didn't didn't you go to that camp? 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:47.120 Did I build a bow like that at a cat camp. No, 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:50.360 I think we sharpened sticks, you know, that would be 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:52.880 that would be more believable. Right, he makes a spear, Yeah, 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:53.640 to battle. 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:54.680 That's most of the way there. 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:58.240 Yeah, But you know, I think it probably speaks volumes 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:00.320 for humans to be you know, to be said all 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:02.680 of this about traps, and especially about you know, loving 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:06.600 these cinematic treatments of traps, because because what are traps? Ultimately, 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:11.080 very broadly speaking, they're clever, tactical and or technological innovations 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:14.800 that level the playing field against predators, against prey, and 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:17.680 even against fellow humans. Traps are the sort of things 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:20.920 that humans have been up to since prehistory. So of 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:23.279 course we love traps, and of course we admire things 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:26.360 like traps that we find in other species. 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:29.400 Right, So today we're going to be focusing on some 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:35.000 allegations of insects with the ability to build traps, specifically 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:39.360 ants that do things that may in fact be biological 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:44.120 evolutions that allow them to trap prey. Now, there are 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:46.760 some other animals that I think we could say more 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:50.800 more clearly and famously create traps. I think the obvious 0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:52.919 example here would be spiders. 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:57.719 Yes, yes, spiders are the trap builders par excellence. You know, 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.640 there are no finer trap builders in the animal Maybe 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:05.080 you could make a case for human beings, but personally 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:08.080 I'm not in favor of that. I think web building 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:12.760 spiders especially are just such highly evolved trap masters. Every 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:16.719 detail of their anatomy and behavior enhances their trapping ability, 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:19.240 and the trap is very much an extension of their 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:22.600 own bodies in so many ways. And we've covered this, 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:24.719 and we've covered spiders in general numerous times in the 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:27.240 show before, and we'll likely keep coming back to them. 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:31.159 But yeah, the spider, the spider is the trap maker. 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:35.120 There's nothing else that the spider really does. Anything else 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:37.800 it does the web building spider is going to do 0:05:38.000 --> 0:05:40.839 in close proximity to the web that it has built. 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:44.640 Yeah. Another example that's come up before, I think in 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:47.599 our Sarlac episodes was the ant lion. 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:52.640 Yes. Yeah, this is a case where we have predatory 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:56.800 larvae that in some species of antlon anyway, set up 0:05:56.839 --> 0:05:59.679 at the bottom of sand pits that they dig, ready 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:03.080 to lack shout at anything that disturbs their grains and 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:06.720 you know, ventures down into the trap. Again, not all 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.560 ant lion species dig trap pits, but some of the 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:10.599 most famous ones. 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:13.559 Do I remember. One of the great things we learned 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:17.440 about the ant lion was that, like you say, it 0:06:17.520 --> 0:06:20.200 is the ones that make traps. It is just the 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:24.320 larval period of their lifespan, their life cycle that they 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:28.360 make the traps. Then they later metamorphosed into another form. 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:31.000 But while they're in that larval stage, I think at 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:36.320 least some of them never poop. So yeah, yeah, catching 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:38.800 ants and eating them and just like waiting, and it's 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:40.800 like if you had to wait until you turned eighteen 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:41.279 to poop. 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:46.000 We'll go back and listen to that Sarlac episode if 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:48.000 you'd like to hear more about the ant lion. There's 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:52.320 also the species of creature known as the worm lion, 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:56.160 and this is unrelated to the ant lion. It's just 0:06:56.200 --> 0:06:59.320 a matter of convergent evolution that he ends up utilizing 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:03.560 largely the exact same method again when it's a larva, 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:06.840 though the pit itself in this case is generated via 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:10.880 a slightly different method, so it digs its pit in 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:14.480 a slightly different method, but it still consumes its prey 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:15.320 in the same manner. 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:17.960 But for me, at least, if you ask me to 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:21.640 make a list of non human animals, that make traps. 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:23.600 I could obviously go spiders. I would have thought of 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:27.240 the ant lion, maybe by association the worm lion. But 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:30.840 there before I was reading up for this episode, I 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:33.240 think I would have drawn a blank. I wouldn't know 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:34.200 what to go to next. 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:37.440 Yeah, and part of it comes down to just how 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:41.960 are you going to going to define a trap? For example, 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:47.160 Here's here's an interesting potential example we can discuss that 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:50.440 I read across read about when I was reading Gilbert 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:55.520 Waldbauer's How Not to Be Eaten, which is largely about insects, 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:58.440 but there's a part where the author is discussing the 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:02.320 burrowing owl. So these are small birds native to the 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:06.280 Great Plains in southern Florida. I think they're about the 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:07.920 size of a robin. I'm to understand that, you know, 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:11.560 the small, little little guys. But they make their home 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:15.760 in burrows that they did themselves. And one of the 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:17.720 interesting things that they do in addition to this, if 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:22.000 this wasn't you know interesting enough already, is the burrowing 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:25.800 owl will scatter horse or cow dung around the entrance 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:29.880 to their burrows. And then, you know, times before European contact, 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:33.720 this would have probably been bison dung, and the dung 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:37.520 does seem to be important because if researchers remove the 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:40.400 dung from the vicinity, the birds will just the bird 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:42.800 will just go out and obtain more dung and place 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:45.840 it in the vicinity. So it seems to be doing 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:49.720 this intentionally. The theory is that they place the dung 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:53.360 to bait dung beetles. So they put the dung out, 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:57.040 dung beetles come, And indeed researchers have been able to 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:00.600 tell that the owls eat ten times more dung beetles 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:02.640 than usual when the dung is out. 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:05.120 Ah. Well, this will in fact mirror one of the 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:09.319 two examples of potential ant trap making that I want 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:10.080 to talk about later. 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:12.840 Yeah, I mean it's but this is a great example. 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:16.240 It's certainly clever. I like it. But it kind of 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:19.360 forces us to ask the question of a trap, like 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:21.679 what is a trap? Is it merely baiting a trap? 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:27.440 That is a good question, yeah, because and how much 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:30.520 does the trap structure have to be separate from your 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:33.600 body in order to recount as a constructed trap? And 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:35.480 how much does it have to how much work does 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:36.720 it have to do for you? 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:41.880 Yeah? And at what point does an animal's behavior stop 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:45.640 being a trap and just become sneaky behavior, sneaky tactics, 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:50.400 or simply ambush predation, because obviously there are plenty of 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:53.240 examples of ambush predators on land and in the sea, 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:56.679 and these include everything from well, the trap door spider 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:59.400 for one, which I think is definitely a case of 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:03.880 building because it's an ambush predator, but it builds a 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:07.640 silk hinge trap door to aid in those ambushes. 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:09.960 Right, so the trapdoor hides it. I think you could 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:13.360 count that as like infrastructure necessary to constitute a trap. 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:16.760 Yeah, yeah, I think that, Yeah, definitely with the trapdoor spider. 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:20.640 But then you also have just various camouflage predators, including 0:10:20.679 --> 0:10:26.040 things like frogfish, praying mantis's, chameleons, and more, which are 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:29.920 not building anything. They're not altering their environment, but they've 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:33.160 evolved to look like a part of their environment and 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:36.520 they have the you know, often tremendous abilities of camouflage 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:39.840 that enable them to quickly ambush something that they want 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:40.240 to eat. 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:43.600 Okay, that probably doesn't That doesn't really seem like a 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:46.880 trap to me, because they're just evolved to look that way, 0:10:47.400 --> 0:10:50.959 and they they do the actual hunting themselves. 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:52.880 Right, And then of course you have various birds and 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:56.280 cats and big cats even that are just very stealthy, 0:10:56.880 --> 0:10:59.960 that are just very good at not being observed by 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:02.880 the things they want to kill. So I was reading 0:11:02.880 --> 0:11:06.400 a little bit about this in Douglas j Imlin's excellent 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:08.840 book Animal Weapons that have referenced on the Show before, 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:12.199 and he points out that creatures such as this generally 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:15.719 depend on quote, a quick strike weapon that immediately incapacitates 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:19.840 its victim. And of course these bioweapons might be enhanced 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:23.120 by special features, such as in various deep sea ambush 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:26.760 predators a bioluminescent lure, which again is not something they 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:29.480 have created or engineered out of their environment, but it 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:31.480 is a part of their body. So when we come 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:32.800 back to this idea that what it needs to be 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:35.080 something that's built, it needs to be something that's engineered, 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:39.120 or just a hole dug in the ground, even we 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:41.240 come back to that same question, well, why don't we 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:44.440 find more of this? And I actually found an interesting 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:47.720 paper title out there, Why are pitfall Traps So Rare 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:52.040 in the Natural World? By G. D Ruxton and MH. Hansel, 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.560 And it appeared in evolutionary ecology in two thousand and nine. 0:11:56.480 --> 0:11:57.400 Interesting question. 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:00.280 Yeah, So the authors here point out that in order 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:03.439 to lay a trap, you generally need either advanced cognitive 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:08.400 powers as with humans obviously, or you need specialist self 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:15.000 secreted materials as with spiders and cattisfly larvae, thing which 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:18.880 the catasi fly larvae use that their their secretions to 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:23.880 create a net like even meshed trap like a silk trap, 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:27.400 in order to filter catch their prey. 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:30.400 That makes sense. So humans can create all kinds of 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:33.560 traps because we have, you know, cognitive powers that allow 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:36.640 us to imagine what could be done. How you know, 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:41.199 other materials in the environment could be repurposed to passively 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:45.480 ensnare or kill prey animals and spiders and stuff. That's 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:47.520 just the trap you could almost say, is a part 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:49.840 of their body. Even though the web is a built thing. 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:53.400 They revolved to secrete the silk for the web out 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:57.240 of their bodies, and they have very instinctually driven behaviors 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:00.960 for how they extrude that silk wear in what patterns. 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:07.520 Right, So, Ruxton and Hansel here ultimately point out that okay, 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:09.640 we have the ant lion though, and of course the 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:14.200 worm lion. These are exceptions to the rule. They make 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:16.920 use of a pitfall trap, and so the authors ask 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:20.640 why is this basic tactic not more common in the 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:23.440 animal world? How hard is it, after all to dig 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:27.960 a hole? They're easy, they're cheap, and yet you don't 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:32.200 see this technique used by virtually anything outside of some 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:36.240 ant lions and worm lions. Apparently, the lack of more 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:39.079 pitfall traps than nature was something of a mystery and 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:40.520 remain something of a mystery. 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:43.600 Yeah, that is interesting, Okay, so it took me a 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:45.720 second to get the distinction they're making. But they're saying 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:48.439 that the ant lion and the wormline would be kind 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:51.920 of an outlier because they don't have complex intelligence and 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:56.400 imagination like humans, so they're not inventing traps with cognitive powers. 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:00.559 But they also don't secrete a material that CONTs institutes 0:14:00.600 --> 0:14:03.400 the basis of the trap like a spider. They're literally 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:06.079 just building a trap out of the dead environment around 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:09.080 of them by digging a conically shaped hole in such 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:11.520 a pattern that ants get stuck in it when they 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:15.240 fall down the side. And why is that so rare, 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:17.040 because it would seem like that that should be a 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:20.040 strategy that lots of animals could easily employ. 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:25.840 Right, Yeah, again, holes are ultimately easy to make, low energy. 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:28.400 Why not? Why why? Why why is this cat not 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:30.120 making a hole and using that as part of its 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:31.000 hunting tactics? 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:34.240 So what are their thoughts on this, like, why would 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:35.960 why wouldn't we see this more often? 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:39.800 Well, they proposed two speculative reasons for the lack of 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:42.840 pitfall traps in nature. The first one is pitfall traps 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:46.480 may require a specialist micro habitat. In other words, you 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:50.040 can't do this just anywhere. Conditions have to be just right, 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:51.920 such as you know, we can look at to the 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:54.080 ant lions, they have to be kind of sandy conditions. 0:14:54.120 --> 0:14:56.600 You know, you have to have that kind of granular environment. 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:01.560 So it's the kind of tactic that a potential trap 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:04.440 builder would not necessarily be able to employ all over 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:06.760 the place. You would have to depend on again, on 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:08.560 a specialist micro habitat. 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:10.920 I think I recall from our Sarlac episode where we 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:14.000 had a segment about the ant lion that they needed 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:17.040 the grains of soil to be of a particular size, 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:21.280 like the sandy grains above or below a certain diameter 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:24.680 threshold would not work very well for making the traps. 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:28.480 Yeah, yeah, Now the second point is that with the 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:32.160 ant lion in particular, the trap target's small prey, and 0:15:32.240 --> 0:15:34.760 since they may be more functionally tied to their trap 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:37.520 than spiders are, traps of this nature could serve as 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:40.800 like basically a major bull's eye for potential predators. And 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:43.640 indeed the main predators of ant lions and worm lions 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:46.360 are birds who know what to look for. 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:49.080 That's a really good point. So by building a trap 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:51.320 and then sitting in it and waiting for your prey 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:53.920 to fall in, you were also usually going to be 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:57.120 making a structure that makes it easy for things that 0:15:57.200 --> 0:15:59.640 want to eat you to define where you are. You know, 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:01.400 they don't have to look too hard because you've made 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:02.960 a big hole in the ground. 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:05.640 Right and and spiders just have a little more leeway 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:08.120 with the situation. Now, I should point out Hansel also 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:10.440 wrote an entire book which I'm going to reference here 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:12.160 in a minute. He spends a lot of time in 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:16.480 that book talking about spiders and how, you know, sometimes 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:20.560 spider webs are very visible and other times they are not, 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:23.560 and how that plays into the you know, the ultimate 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:27.440 kind of complex relationship between spiders and the creatures that 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:32.600 would eat spiders. But just thinking about this as the 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:36.720 trap being this conspicuous thing. This we actually see this 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:39.240 in a lot of our fantastic trap fiction. You know 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:42.040 that moment when the target of the clever cinematic trap, 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:47.280 especially if it's laid by the protagonists, the enemy almost 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:51.360 sets it off, right, like the predator almost triggers the 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:55.920 trip line you've prepared. But then something happens, right the 0:16:56.080 --> 0:16:59.160 monster deduces that the trap is there, or it suspects 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:00.520 that something is off. 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:04.239 Oh, and maybe even the presence of a trap is 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:07.240 how the hero knows that they have stumbled across the 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:08.240 bad guy's hideout. 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:12.600 Yeah. Yeah. It even reminds me a bit of our 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:15.240 recent weird house selection, The Lift. This was the Killer 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:18.960 Elevator movie, the Killer Elevator in this or I guess 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:23.000 you were more specifically the weird biobrain that's been installed 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:26.800 in the elevator shaft to power these elevators. It's kind 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:31.119 of an obligate trap predator, but it's so tied to 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:34.240 that environment that it's a little tricky, like it's not 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:37.560 able to pull off every kill, and it's eventually destroyed 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:39.440 by prey that is too clever for it. 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:44.399 Brilliant analogy. This is true. The killer elevator is an 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:45.800 obligate trap predator. 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:49.240 I also have to point out, speaking of the Sarlac, 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:53.720 is that recent Mandalorian episodes have also sort of played 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:56.080 with this idea. Yeah, yeah, the Mighty Sarlac. The Startlack's 0:17:56.080 --> 0:17:58.480 pretty impressive, but they make it clear that even these 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:01.320 great trap predators can be a soom by the mighty 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:05.360 create dragon that lives in the deserts of Tatooine. So 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.600 knowing you're there being you know, this identifiable organism in 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:12.080 the sand, that can have a huge downside to it. 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:14.240 Now, I was trying to think of counterpoints to the 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:17.679 idea that. Okay, so sitting at the bottom of a 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:20.280 pitfall trap and waiting for prey to fall into you 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:24.320 and then eating that that makes you vulnerable to predators 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:26.879 that want to find you. Well, well, what if you 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:29.600 just make pitfall traps and then you go away and 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:31.840 then you know, leave them there and then come back 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:33.639 like a human hunter might do, you know, leave a 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:35.320 trap out in the woods and then come and see 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:39.520 what it collected lobster traps or something. But I can 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:41.760 see downsides to that as well, because if it's just 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:44.640 a pit trap, you could imagine that, well, something might 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:46.879 fall in there, but then something else might eat it 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:50.560 before you get to it, right, so, or it might 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:52.400 you know, if you have to make these all over 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:54.520 the place, you might spend a lot of energy going 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:56.880 around from one to the other. So is that really 0:18:56.880 --> 0:18:58.520 all that much better than just hunting? 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:00.879 Well, and then it kind of comes back to this 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:06.600 idea that the trap laid by an animal especially still 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:09.760 requires the lethal mechanism, and in the case of the antlime, 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:13.040 the legal lethal mechanism is itself. It is still essentially 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:17.800 an ambush predator like again, like Emmilin says, quote a 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:20.560 quick strike weapon that immediately incapacitates its victim. 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:22.639 Yeah, I can't believe I didn't think of that. That's, 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:24.199 of course a good point. You have to find a 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:26.000 way to kill the prey, right. 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:29.919 So I mentioned that that Henzel has a whole book 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:32.359 that deals with with some of this a little bit, 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.359 but just sort of the broader picture of animals building things. 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:39.040 It's titled Animal Architecture, and I was reading through this 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:41.639 a bit. He contends that we're not looking at traps 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:45.320 when we're looking at cases of an animal baiting another animal, 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:49.120 because traps are a kind of subset of animal architecture, 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:52.320 an engineered space that aids in capture. 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:56.439 Okay, so by his metric here, what the burrowing owl 0:19:56.560 --> 0:20:00.480 does by leaving dung out around its nest and having 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:03.639 this attract insects to it, that would not count as 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:05.960 a trap because it is not a structure that in 0:20:06.000 --> 0:20:09.080 any way aids and capture. It just attracts prey to 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:09.840 a site. 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:12.199 Oh, by the way, I want to also, speaking of 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:14.560 the burrowing owl again, I want to throw in that 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:18.280 while some burrowing owls do build their own burrows, they're 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:23.200 also burrowing owls that acquire the burrows of other creatures. Anyway, 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:25.240 I want to read this quote from Hansel here. I 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:29.959 think he puts it rather well concerning the animal architecture 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:33.119 and traps quote. Whereas a house can just be a 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:36.360 barrier between the builder and the outside world, a trap 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:40.399 has a dynamic relationship between itself and the prey. The 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:43.520 prey needs to approach the trap in a particular orientation 0:20:43.680 --> 0:20:46.359 to it, and then needs to be restrained by it. 0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:50.040 Traps are therefore more complex than homes and need to 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:53.200 be more precisely engineered, and then he goes on to 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:55.680 point out the quote among the vertebrates, trap builders were 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:59.320 apparently absent until the recent history of man. Now he 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:02.960 cites human mental capacity once more for the construction of 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:07.080 such traps, noting quote, Virtually all non human trap builders 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:11.439 use self secreted materials, and the capture principle they adopt 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:15.680 is the net. Exceptions are simple in design and operation, 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:18.560 as well as rare, and then he goes on to 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:24.760 specifically mention antlions, worm lions, and larval diptra. 0:21:31.440 --> 0:21:34.600 But anyway, a large takeaway here is that trap building 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:38.480 is not as widespread in the animal kingdom as you 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:41.320 might expect. Humans make a lot of traps. There are 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:46.160 some very specialized animals, especially some invertebrates, that use traps 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:49.120 made of materials that they secrete from their own bodies, 0:21:49.680 --> 0:21:54.240