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Thanks to Kari for suggesting this week's topics! Definitely check out her book Butt or Face?, which is funny and has lots of animal information!\n\nFurther reading:\n\nButt or Face? by Kari Lavelle\n\nGBIF: Araneus praesignis [the spider pictures below come from this site]\n\n\n\nThe turtle ant's body is flattened and the soldier caste ants have specialized head shapes to block the nest entrances:\n\n\n\nThe alien butt spider has a butt that looks like an alien's face!\n\n\n\nThe alien butt spider hides during the day in its leaf fort:\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nThis week we\u2019re going to learn about two really weird invertebrates suggested by Kari. One of these two animals is her favorite and the other is a weird ant from a book she wrote. Kari\u2019s full name is Kari Lavelle and her book is for kids, called Butt or Face? It actually releases tomorrow as this episode goes live, so if you\u2019re listening to this episode on Monday, July 10, 2023, you still have time to preorder the book, or you can just wait a day and run out to your local bookstore or library to get a copy.\n\nKari was nice enough to send me a copy of the book and it\u2019s really funny and interesting. It\u2019s partly a game where you look at a picture and decide whether it shows an animal\u2019s butt or its face. It\u2019s a lot harder than you\u2019d think! You make your guess and turn the page to find out if you\u2019re right and learn about the animal. It\u2019s very fun and I actually guessed wrong on one animal, but I\u2019m not telling you which one. There\u2019s a link in the show notes if you want to learn more about the book and maybe order a copy for yourself.\n\nAnyway, let\u2019s talk about the ant first, because it\u2019s actually one I\u2019ve had on the list to talk about for a while. I was really excited to see it in Kari\u2019s book. It\u2019s called the turtle ant, sometimes called the \u201cdoor head\u201d ant. That gives you a clue as to whether its picture in the book features its butt or its face.\n\nThe turtle ant is any of the well over 100 species of ant in the genus Cephalotes, which are native to the Americas. Most live in Central and South America, especially in tropical and subtropical areas. Almost all species live in trees, nesting in cavities originally made by beetle larvae.\n\nFor the most part, turtle ants are pretty typical compared to other ant species. They have a generalized diet, eating pretty much anything they find. This includes plant material, dead insects and other animals they find, bird poop, nectar, and even pollen in some species. Each colony has a single queen that mates with multiple males and lays all the eggs for the colony. Worker ants tend the eggs and larvae, gather food, and keep the colony clean. But as in some other ants, many species of turtle ant have a soldier caste. These are worker ants who are specialized to defend the nest. We talked about army ants recently, in episode 328, and also back in episode 185, and army ant soldiers have massive sharp mandibles that can inflict painful bites. But the turtle ant soldiers don\u2019t have sharp mandibles and aren\u2019t aggressive. They have one job, and that job is to stand at the nest\u2019s entrances and stop them up with their heads, only moving when another ant needs to get through.\n\nAs a result, turtle ant soldiers have weird-shaped heads. The head shape varies from species to species, with some looking more normal and some being heavily armored and strangely shaped. Well, they\u2019re not strangely shaped except in comparison to an ordinary ant head. They\u2019re shaped exactly right to do the job they\u2019ve evolved to do, be a door. In some species, the top of the soldier\u2019s head is completely round and flattened, just the right size and shape to block the entrance.\n\nTurtle ants have another ability that they share with some other ants. If an ant falls from the twig or branch it\u2019s climbing on, instead of just falling to the ground, it can glide back to the tree trunk.