By Susan Milius
A South American bee that ignores flowers and collects the meat from animal carcasses turns out to have an unexpected taste for live prey too.
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This stingless bee, Trigona hypogea, carries off the youngsters left behind in newly abandoned wasp nests, says Fernando Noll of the University of São Paulo in Brazil. He and his colleague Sidnei Mateus have observed the bees swiftly cleaning out wasp broods. In an upcoming Naturwissenschaften, the researchers contend that such efficient raiding is “not aberrant behavior, but is merely a lesser known part of the bees’ normal repertoire.”