Animal Mimicry

I started my scavenger hunt by watching this video on YouTube. Link to video Mimicry is when an organism looks, smells, sounds, or behaves like another animal or object. There are different types of mimicry.

Mimesis

The organism mimics an inanimate object. These preserved owls from the Beatty Biodiversity Museum look like logs or tree bark.

This stick insect looks like a stick.

Mimesis protects predators from prey but can also camouflage predators from prey.

Batesian Mimcry

A harmless animal mimics a harmful or dangerous animal. Hover Flies copy Yellow Jacket Wasps. The hover fly is on the left in the picture below, and the wasp is on the right. The graphic can also be found at Beaty.

Mullerian Mimicry

The model and the mimic are both harmful.

Both the Monarch and the Viceroy Butterflies taste bad to predators. Below is a picture of the Monarch Butterfly from Beaty.

Aggressive Mimicry

The predator lures its prey with a trait of another animal. We could not find any example of this kind of animal at Beaty, but this video below shows how an alligator snapping turtle’s tongue mimics a worm to catch a fish.

link to Video

Inter-Sexual Mimicry

One sex mimics the other. We did not find any examples at Beaty, but this video shows how the cuddle fish does it.

Automimicry

Automimicry is when one body part looks like another, often eyes. The Swallow Tail Butterfly’s wingtips look like its head an antennae. Predators go for this part and the butterfly can get a chance to escape.

We even found combinations of mimicry types. These moths look like they have the eyes of owls or hawks on their wings, so predators will leave them alone. This is a combination of Batesian and automimicry I think.

Nag and Nagaina From Rikki Tikki Tavi also mimic eyes on the back of their head, but they are dangerous, so this just an example of automimicry. It shows any animal can be both predator and prey.

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Photos were taken at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. They are my own