Imagine going on a first date with someone whose perfume drives you wild. But when you lean in for that first kiss, you realize your suitor is actually nothing more than a writhing mass of parasitic blister beetle larvae.

This is the plight of the burrowing bee.

You see, sometimes when a male bee is buzzing along the sand dunes, he smells what appears to be a female’s pheromones. Mating is highly competitive in these species, so it pays for the male to buzz in and have a look.

Unfortunately for him, blister beetle larvae have evolved the ability to create chemicals that make them smell like a female burrowing bee. The critters even boost the profile of their scent by crawling up a strand of grass and forming a bee-sized ball of baby beetles. These larvae are known as triungulins, for their feet, which have three claws that resemble grappling hooks.

When the male bee attempts to mate with this decoy, the triungulins latch onto him with their hook-like claws and tackle him to the dunes below. Eventually, when the male flies off in search of a real female, he does so with a horde of hitchhikers attached to his fuzzy body. The larvae then latch onto the female and ride her to a burrow.

There, she lays a single egg and deposits a ton of pollen and nectar. But those nutrients may not make it to the baby bee, because the triungulins gobble them up first before transforming into adults.

Source: Sex, Lies, and Grappling Hooks: Meet the Parasitic Blister Beetle