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Handy disguise

Plants encourage insects to collect their seeds by adding a tasty capsule to them, and ants are very diligent about gathering them. David Attenborough looks at seeds that aren't really seeds, but seem to fool the ants. It's an Australian stick insect which disguises its eggs as seeds, so that ants collect them and take them back to their nest, inadvertantly protecting them from predators. After several years underground the eggs hatch and the baby stick insects scurry out of the nest looking for a tree to climb - the only time you'll ever see a stick insect running.

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3 minutes

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