“Don’t do it! Please, I’m begging you,” said Dr. Emily Swanson, putting her hand on the barrel of Aron’s flame thrower.
“Doctor, we were ordered to destroy the eggs,” Aron said.
“Twenty minutes. Just give me twenty minutes to collect some samples,” she said looking at the giant eggs scattered along the cavern floor and walls.
“What do you find so interesting about these spiders anyway?”
Emily smiled and putting down her knapsack, she proceeded to grab a few tools.
“They’re code breakers,” she said. “Sneaky little devils. A parasitic brood.”
With a small hammer and knife, she cut the top off one egg, exposing the embryonic liquid within.
“First the spiders deposit their eggs in this nest that belongs to the Cacau Martian ant," she said while scraping the egg shell, "the ants does not suspect a thing, being blind as they are. As the spider larvae grow, their pheromones triggers an instinctual behavior on the ant workers, who take them to their brood chambers, where the spiderlings feast on the adjoining ant larvae and eggs. When they hatch, the little spiders trick the ant into feeding them delicious regurgitated liquid food. They do this by exploiting the ant’s FAP.”
Aron laughed.
“Did you say FAP?”
“Don’t get too excited, Mr. Smith,” Emily told him. “A Fixed Action Pattern is an instinctual behavior that can be released with a trigger, like a yawn or the inability to keep your mind out of the gutter when you hear the word FAP. In the ant’s case, they regurgitate food when you tap their mandibles. The parasitic spiders do this by using their pincers. A supernormal stimulus to use the technical term. Quite the gruesome yet fascinating spectacle.”
Dr. Swanson reached inside the egg with one arm and pulled out a squirming spider larva.
“Are you sure you’re authorized to do this, doctor?” said Aron.
“Would I be doing it if I wasn’t?” she said putting the larva in a specimen container.
Aron was about to say something else but she cut him short.
“You can burn it all down now,” she said with an excited grin.
Seeing her enthusiasm, Aron’s face lit up.
“Even the ant eggs?” he said.
“Yes! Everything! We must be thorough,” said Emily. “Burn it all down, Mr. Smith. Don’t leave a single egg uncooked.”
She gave him a conspiratorial wink and quickly made her way out of the cave with the specimen cradled in her arms. Behind her, she could hear the hiss of the flame thrower as the exterminator finished the job.
Image by @litguru