It's not easy being a fly. You don't live long, you eat lots of feces and sometimes, when you're just trying to get laid, you get tricked by a flower into being its artificial sperm donor.
Meet the South African beetle daisy (Gorteria diffusa), an unassuming orange flower that populates Namaqualand, a blooming desert in southwest Africa. Upon closer inspection, it reveals a remarkable case of plant sexual deception, a form of pseudocopulation. This is when a plant grows something that looks almost exactly like a bug or other pollinator, as a way of attracting an unwitting host to spread pollen and generate new plants.
