Flamingo Whirlpools and Scorching Spiders: 5 Cunning Tactics in the Animal Kingdom

"Work smarter, not harder." That's the case with these animals - they may not have the brain power of a human, but they've still evolved clever ways to kill predators (or prey!) Let's take a look at how...

• Flamingos Fish With Whirlpools
• Honeybees Overheat Hornets
• Sea Cucumbers Self-Eviscerate
• Termites Become Toxic Time Bombs
• The Buck Spoor Spider Scorches Prey

Flamingos Fish With Whirlpools

Flamingos tend to feed on algae, small crustaceans (like brine shrimp) and insect larvae... but trying to pluck these tiny creatures from the water would take the birds a lot of time and effort.

It turns out these waders may have another trick up their sleeves - using specific motions of their feet and beaks to generate vortices beneath the water, pulling prey together for the bird to grab in one gulp!

Researchers managed to film the flamingoes feeding in a tank, revealing that chattering of their L-shaped beak and a subsequent swift head withdrawal created a short-lived whirlpool... and as a result, potential prey was dragged together for the bird to gobble up. As if this wasn't enough, the birds had another trick - splashing their wide feet generated yet more vortexes beneath the surface!

Honeybees Overheat Hornets

A fight between a honeybee and a hornet is horribly one-sided. The hornet is primarily a carnivore, hunting other insects for food - as a result, they are big, fast, tough and aggressive. In the other corner we have the small and largely inoffensive Japanese honeybee, able to sting once as a last act of defiance... one that will typically fail to penetrate the chitinous armor of a hornet.

So what are the bees to do when a hornet scout finds their nest? Well, the bees do their best to lure the hornet inside. It's a dangerous and counterintuitive task that all but guarantees the death of one or more workers... but once inside, the bees can mob the invader.

While they may not be able to sting the hornet to death, the bees have another, less obvious weapon in their arsenal. They're a couple of degrees more heat tolerant than the hornets and can raise the ambient temperature to fatal levels by forming a "bee ball" around the intruder!

Sea Cucumbers Self-Eviscerate

Perhaps you've already heard of sea cucumbers ejecting their internal organs as a defense? While this is true, it doesn't really do justice to this hyperspecialized attack.

The Holothuria sea cucumbers don't start with self-evisceration - they can burrow into sand and can even harden or soften their skin, making it easier to slip away or wedge themselves into rock crevasses.

If a predator remains determined to make a meal of the cucumber, it can move on to more drastic measures. The creature can eject stomach, guts or the Cuvierian organ (an expanding sticky mass of tubes and filaments that acts like a net of glue - it's actually connected to the respiratory systems of the cucumber) to distract or trap a threat. The cucumber can regrow these organs, surviving by absorbing nutrients through its skin!

These ejected organs can also be laced with poison, just to help ram the message home. The toxins are no joke either - the poisons leaking from a sea cucumber that got caught in the pump of a 250 gallon salt-water fish tank killed everything else in the aquarium!

Termites Become Toxic Time Bombs

Colony insects sometimes rely on sacrificial defense strategies, giving their lives so that the colony as a whole can survive. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of Neocapritermes taracua, a termite from French Guiana that carries a payload of toxic glue.

The insect slowly builds up a store of an enzyme called blue laccase BP76 in an area of its back, which looks like a "rucksack" of blue crystals in elderly examples. Should the termite decide to rupture this rucksack, the blue enzyme mixes with other bodily substances to create a sticky toxic glue that spurts out of the stricken insect. The process is fatal to the termite (shockingly, using your body as a bomb lab has downsides) but can immobilize or even outright kill threats to the colony.

Because the payload is built up over the lifetime of the termite, older insects produce a more powerful toxic burst... which means that termites already approaching the end of their life are the best suited for a poisonous last stand!

The Buck Spoor Spider Scorches Prey

The buck spoor spider gets its name from the silk-topped burrows it makes... because they look like the spoor (hoof print) of a buck!

The spider builds these burrows to hide from the deadly heat of the African deserts, but they also serve as a hunting hide. The spider waits beneath a silken sheet for prey to wander too close, then pounces.

There's one fly in the ointment (if you'll pardon the pun) - the preferred meal of the buck spoor spider is the dune ant, a dangerous creature that can be twice its size and is covered in chitinous plates. Perhaps that's why the spider elects to burn its prey to death rather than fight it one on one!

When an ant walks over the silk-topped burrow, the spider grabs it with strong front legs... and simple holds it in place. Unable to move (and pulled down onto the hot sand) the ant soon succumbs to overheating and the spider can drag its meal beneath to eat in the shade!

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• 7 Out-of-This-World Animals So Strange They Seem Alien

Sources and Further Info:

• Flamingos use their L-shaped beak and morphing feet to induce vortical traps for prey capture
• Bees Kill A Giant Hornet With Heat | Buddha, Bees and The Giant Hornet Queen | BBC Earth
• This weird sea cucumber fires poisonous intestines from its butt to deter predators. Don't worry, they grow back...
• This sea cucumber shoots sticky tubes out of its butt. Its genes hint at how
• Apparent holothurin toxicosis in a home aquarium
• Exploding termites defend their colony
• Kamikaze termites protect their colony with the help of a special enzyme whose secrets have now been uncovered