When Good Friends Go Bad

During our lives we find our selves surrounded by groups of people that we consider to have close bond with. You hang out together and grow a pretty close friendship but then sometimes out of now where it all changes. Something goes wrong and the friendship is broken, sometimes through no fault of your own but they just turn and it seems as if they are out to get you. Well the African armoured ground cricket (Acanthoplus discoidalis) knows better than the most what it’s like to be on the bad side of a change of heart. These incredibly large crickets make their way up trees homing young and defenceless bird species, while the mother is out gathering food. Then these mini beasts move in and try to eat their newly born chicks. When a mother bird returns, the ground cricket sprays her with its own distasteful blood, temporally blinding the mother. Once released, however the scent of his blood attracts the attention of other ground crickets (they are like the sharks of the insect world). This then changes their attitude and their feeding focus turns to that of the recently confronted cricket. This progresses in members of the same species eating one of their own. Talk about a bad fall out, at least if we seek to break a friendship it’s Facebook or Twitter that get the brunt of it, not our own limbs.