The Japanese bee (Apis cerana japonica)
Desert spiders and Japanese bees show us that, although we are the only ones who cook systematically, there are animals that use heat to “cook” their victims — or at least to kill them.
In southern Africa, for example, so-called spiders buckspoor (Seothyra) that live in deserts, hide under thin webs stuck with sand, becoming practically invisible on the surface of the dunes.
When a dune ant passes overhead, the spider quickly emerges and, with its legs extended from beneath this “carpet” of sand, immobilizes the insect against the scorching ground, where the temperature can reach 50°C.
The result is prey that dies “cooked” by the heat of the ground.
A similar mechanism, but used here as a defense, is put into practice by Japanese bees (Apis cerana japonica). When faced with a wasp attack, a group of workers surrounds the invader and produces heat by vibrating the muscles in the wingsraising the temperature to an unbearable level for the wasp, which ends up dying as if it were boiled.
However, as , there is a crucial difference (only if we ‘close our eyes’, for example, to the poor lobster): humans cook animals that are almost always dead, a practice associated with evolutionary advantages, such as a lower risk of poisoning and better digestibility. And there are signs of learning in other primates. More than a decade ago, Worka bonobo in captivity in the USA, learned how to make a small fire and toast a marshmallow:
