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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A doctoral researcher at the University of Bayreuth has discovered an unusually cunning imitation strategy in the plant kingdom.
Many flowering plants attract insects which pollinate their flowers. This is only in this way that they can ensure the survival of their species. A twiner native to southern Africa, Sanderson´s parachute flower (Ceropegia sandersonii), has a particularly cunning strategy for attracting flies for pollination. Its way of ensuring pollination is a complicated ploy involving fraud and imprisonment. These "crimes" in the plant kingdom have now been exposed by Annemarie Heiduk, a doctoral researcher in biology at the University of Bayreuth. Scientists from Bayreuth, Salzburg, Bielefeld, Darmstadt, London, and Pietermaritzburg helped her gather the evidence. The international team has now presented its research findings in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology.
The victims of this scam are freeloader flies of the genus Desmometopa. To attract such flies, the parachute flowfers produce a complex fragrance that is irresistible to these two millimetre large insects. The reason is that Desmometopa flies always have a healthy appetite for honeybees. However, they don't hunt down the prey themselves. It is rather spiders and insect predators that attack and kill the honeybees. The flies are then able to detect the prey within a few seconds and feast on the fluid leaking from their bodies while the predators are eating them. They thus steal food from the predators. For this reason, biologists also refer to the flies as kleptoparasites.
A mixture of substances emitted from the glands of the struggling or dying bees helps the flies to find their favourite prey. "These substances (we also refer to them as 'alarm pheromones'), which are released in moments of great distress, have a scent that is as about as appetizing to the flies as the aroma of a Sunday roast is to humans," explains Annemarie Heiduk. The Bayreuth scientist has demonstrated that the parachute flowers produce no fewer than 33 substances that are also emitted by honeybees that have been fatally attacked. Together, these substances produce a floral scent so deceptively similar that it tricks the flies with nearly perfect chemical mimicry. To the surprise of the flies, instead of enjoying a feast, they plunge into the plant's pitfall flowers.
The Desmometopa flies, notorious food thieves, have now been doubly deceived: not only do they find no dying bees, they do not even find any nectar or other substances produced by flowers (e.g. pollen). The flowers of Ceropegia contain absolutely nothing for the flies to eat. They are known as "deceptive flowers," allowing themselves to be pollinated by the insects they attract without rewarding them with food. In addition to this trick, there is also the ensuing imprisonment, as the plants trap the flies in their flowers for around 24 hours. This ensures that the flies -- searching for both food and a way out -- do all the work when it comes to pollination. As a result of this activity combined with food deprivation, the flies are quite weak when they are finally allowed to fly away. As hungry as they are, they are magically drawn to the alluring, deceptive scent of neighbouring flowers, where they end up back at square one.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Tuesday October 18 2016, @05:17PM
I'm a brave man to try a standard SN automobile analogy, this is gonna be a rough one.
So there's an abandoned gas station that looks lively and it lures in homeless people who normally beg customers for change, but little do they know that a vampire lives there and he sucks their blood and there's no customers to beg change for malt liquor. The vampire can't go out in the sun but he lets cannibal zombies live around his station and the zombies drag the homeless people into the gas station office where the vampire drinks their blood, then tosses the brains around to attract more zombies.
Isn't that awful? Its the best I could do. The second best was some elaborate ramble about vacuum operated power brake systems but that was not going well.
(Score: 2) by black6host on Tuesday October 18 2016, @05:40PM
Yeah, that was a bit of a stretch, heh heh. Practice makes perfect and all that. I'll give you a B for effort :)
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday October 18 2016, @08:04PM
A good attempt, but it's more like Las Vegas buffets.
You're fairly hungry and you see a shiny casino. Walking in, you see the directions to the buffet and can smell all the delicious food walking through the casino. However, the casino is empty and the buffets are all empty with no food to be found. Slot machines and food smells are all to be found. Just people wandering around asking where the buffet is and if they can be comp'd. Occasionally somebody will get bored along the way and play the slots. Some people eventually escape outside, even more hungry than before, only to see another shiny casino that they enter looking for the buffet.....
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday October 18 2016, @08:51PM
There's a stoner (regular user of pot) looking for munchies. He finds a gas station smelling of fresh doughnuts and chocolate chip cookies and he enters looking to steal junk food bought by other customers. However, this gas station no more than a trap which locks its doors for 24 hours after the stoner enters and makes him stock the shelves during that time. Unlike most gas stations though, this one does not reward him with food or wages at the end of the day. When the gas station finally unlocks the door, the stoner emerges weak and hungry and is attracted to the convenience store next door by the smell of fresh doughnuts and chocolate chip cookies...
Sorry, no cars.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @12:10AM
Pre-GPS-nav:
Washington DC -- you drive in looking to feed your mind at all the neat museums and other dead-hero cultural attractions. Unfortunately the signage is so poor that you can never find your way to your desired destination. If you do start to work your way out, another bad sign sends you back into the next burg, still in the metro area.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 19 2016, @12:11PM
Thats not bad for an automotive analogy, AC.
Maybe mix in something like the GPS database being fooled by those wild and crazy DPW workers who put up one way streets because the fast food companies bribed them so you have to drive in circles for hours until you end up at mcD instead of the fancy restaurant you thought you were driving to.
Its a tough automobile analogy to make...