Mimicry
Some animals and plants look like other things -- they
mimic them. Mimicry is another type of deceptive coloration. It can protect the mimic from predators or hide the mimic from prey.
If mimicry was a play, there would be three characters.
The Model - the species or object that is copied.
The Mimic - looks and acts like another species or object.
The Dupe- the tricked predator or prey.
The poisonous coral snake and the harmless king snake look a lot alike. Predators will avoid the king snake because they think it is poisonous. This type of mimicry is called Batesian mimicry. In Batesian mimicry a harmless species mimics a toxic or dangerous species.
The viceroy butterfly and monarch butterfly were once thought to exhibit Batesian mimicry where a harmless species mimics a toxic species. Studies conducted in the early 1990's suggest that the viceroy and the monarch are actually examples of Mullerian mimicry where two equally toxic species mimic each other to the benefit of each. Just goes to show you that there's always something new to discover in the natural world!
Could You Tell the Difference?
Place your cursor over each butterfly to see what it is.
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Photo by William T. Hark |
Aggressive Mimicry
Some mimics look like something else, not to avoid predators, but to catch prey. Aggressive mimics resemble their background or signal that they are something else to help them catch their prey.
The frogfish or angler fish lures its prey to where it can strike. It has a long antenna-like extension on its head that it wiggles. Other fish and crustaceans think its a little fish and come in close to eat it. When they do, the anglerfish eats them!
Cryptic Coloration
Some organisms look so much like another object that they almost disappear!
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The walking stick looks so much like a twig that it's easy to overlook it. |
| The katydid looks like a leaf. |
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The praying mantis can look like a leaf and a twig! |
Eyespots: I'm Watching You!
Some butterflies and moths have large eyespots. These eyespots trick birds into thinking the butterfly or moth is much larger than it really is!
Image Credits: Clipart.com unless otherwise noted
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Stripes and spots can be disruptive coloration. Disruptive coloration helps break up an animal's outline. This makes it difficult for other animals to see it.
You'd think that the black and white stripes of the zebra would make it easy for predators to see it! The main predator of the zebra is the lion. Lions don't like to hunt in the heat of the day, they prefer sleeping in the shade. They hunt as it gets dark. As the sun goes down, the black and white stripes of the zebra help it blend into the tall grass.
But the zebra's stripes have another purpose. 
Zebras live in herds. Lions like to pick out one member of the herd that looks weak. When the lion attacks, the zebras start running in all directions. With all those stripes mixing together, its easy for the lion to lose the zebra it picked out of the herd.
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