It’s easy to forget that plants are living, moving, reactive organisms when to the human eye they appear to swoosh about so passively. Every now and then a species comes along that reminds you of this – most recently Vincetoxicum nakaianum , the plant that pretends to be an ant. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

This species is pretty new-to-science in itself, having only been described just last year . It’s one of several dogbane species and as scientists continued to study its unique qualities, they discovered that it was using chemical signals to mimic those of ants as a way to lure in pollinators. It’s the first time we’ve ever discovered a plant that does this.

It all hinges on the laziness of grass flies. You

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