Every Type of Mimicry Explained

Mimicry is when an organism copies another organism's homework and evolves to resemble them visually, behaviorally, chemically, any kind of Lee really. It's one of the most diverse and useful traits in nature because the right kind of deception can mean the difference between life and death in so many situations. And today I'm going to explain them all to you. Let's get into it.

Caterpillars of the eastern tiger swallow tail have these large black eye spots that resemble the eyes of snakes. When birds that normally like to eat caterpillars see this, they need to take a moment to decipher whether this is a tasty morsel or a scary predator. In order to sell the illusion, the caterpillar pops out an orange appendage called an osmaterium, which mimics the look and smell of a snake's forked tongue. They also rear up and wriggle in a way that mimics a lot of predatory snakes, ultimately scaring the bird away. This is a case of Batesian mimicry, the sheep in wolf's clothing. An intimidation tactic where a prey animal scares off their predator by pretending to be something that the predator would naturally be afraid of.

Cheetah cubs have this layer of white fur on their back, which looks very similar to the white mantle of honey badgers. In case you don't know, honey badgers might be the single most dangerous mammal relative to their size. They are insanely vicious and resilient and have even been seen going toe-to-toe with lions and winning. The mere existence of the honeybger is something that larger predators need to be aware of. So helpless cheetah cubs, which are close to them in size, can take advantage of this and become a lot safer when they resemble them. Hence the white mantle that they lose upon growing up.

Batesian mimicry is the most common and most studied form of mimicry by far. Because from an evolutionary perspective, it's a very simple pathway to go down. Cheetah cubs that have less white fur on their back have a lower chance of being mistaken as a honeybger. And so they're far more likely to be targeted by a predator. Meaning that the ones that are better mimics of their model species have a better chance of tricking the dupe species and surviving to reproduce. It's nice and simple natural selection. Repeat this cycle for thousands of years and your species can become a pretty convincing batian mimic. Also, yes, it's Batesian, not Bisian, even though that's how I initially learned it since it's named after Henry Bates. But say it however you want. No one's going to call them mimicry, please.

And now that you understand it, we have to talk about the one place where Batesian mimics really shine, literally. Apostatism is the occurrence of bright visual patterns across an animal's surface, causing them to stand out in their environment. Now, why would an organism evolve this rather than the ubiquitously useful camouflage? Well, it's because they're just being honest. Aposmatic animals openly advertise that they are extremely dangerous. Poison dart frogs are the poster example of this. They look cute. They look friendly. But if you ever give one a kiss, they will not end up a prince. Instead, you will end up like prince because these guys are filled to the brim with enough poison to easily kill a gorilla or 100 humans. So, now we know who the real winner of that fight is. Other good examples of apozeism are the yellow stripes of bees and wasps, the iridescent rings of venomous octopus, and the crazy body shapes of the flamboyant cuttlefish.

Now, aposeism isn't mimicry. It's an honest signal that says, "Don't [ __ ] with me." and gets predators to quickly associate these bright colors with deadly toxins or stinky spray or just a disgusting taste. And so it is the perfect strategy for mimics to leech off of. These are different species of Dendrobades frogs which will kill you with ease. They each occupy a different geographical region. And these are members of the species Dendrobades imitator, a completely harmless frog that takes on the patterns of its poisonous cousins depending on the location that it's in. These are surfid flies which look like bees and wasps but are actually pretty friendly and unable to sting. The cheetah cubs from earlier are another example of this. As the reason honey badgers have their white mantle to begin with is as an aposmatic signal that advertises that these paws are rated E for every fauna. Through bates mimicry, harmless prey can reap the benefits of deadly animals without having to do the evolutionary work of becoming deadly because copying their outfit is way easier.

These are three different species of snake. One of them is the harmless milknake. One is the slightly toxic false coral snake and one is the coral snake, one of the most highly venomous creatures in the world. They each have patterns that consist of red, white, black, and yellow. But how do you tell which one is which? Well, there's the popular adage, red touches yellow, kill a fellow. Red touches black, venom lack. Except this saying can easily get you killed as it only applies to some areas in North America and not even 100% of the time. Apparently, the reason this is so confusing is that all three of the snakes are mimics of each other. Sort of.

From the milknake's perspective, it's just batsian mimicry. It's harmless. So, it uses the toxic others as models to appear more threatening. But from the coral snakes perspective, it's a bit harder to explain. Because coral snakes are so deadly, predators die every single time they try to hunt them. But because they look like these other two snakes that predators can hunt, they still end up getting attacked. But the whole point of apoatism is to prevent being attacked in the first place, which only works when predators have the opportunity to learn to stay away. If they're always dying, they're never learning. And if they're never learning, the coral snakes are still getting attacked. So in this case, it's actually better for the coral snake to mimic its false counterparts to receive less attention. It's like they went overboard with the deadliness to the point of it being harmful to themselves. This is called Mc Sllayan mimicry where a deadly animal mimics a less deadly one. And this is the only example of it happening that we really understand. The only reason it's possible here is because of the existence of the false coral snake, which is the only one that does its job properly. False corals are toxic enough that predators will want to avoid them, but not so toxic that they prevent predators from learning that, which allows both the less dangerous milknake and the more dangerous coral snake to mimic it. Most systems don't have this gradient of toxicity to work with, and so Ms. Sllayan mimicry is unusually rare.

Now, a few organisms have found that instead of mimicking a more deadly or less deadly animal, they can pretend to be the predator itself. Gilbertian mimicry is Batesian mimicry except the model and the dupe are the exact same organism. Pacifllora is a genus of plant that gets parasetized by heliconius butterflies. The butterflies lay their eggs on their leaves which hatch and eat it up harming the plant. But female heliconius avoid laying eggs on plants that they've seen have already been claimed by another female. Because when that happens, the families compete for resources and even cannibalize each other. So pacifa grows. these small yellow bumps to deter heliconius butterflies from laying there. Gilbertian mimicry is also quite rare and is only really found in plants. In animals, it's unlikely that a prey or host would ever have the means to look similar to their predator or parasite, which is obviously a requirement for mimicry to develop.

This is why mimics and models tend to be somewhat related or just look similar in the first place. I mean, caterpillars aren't mimicking honey badgers because they don't walk, talk, or look like a honeybger. But they are often green and tube-shaped, and they get hunted by birds, which get hunted by snakes, which are also often green and tube-shaped. And so, multiple species of caterpillar have come to look and act like multiple species of snake. And not just snakes from their local area. Remember, this mimicry is meant to scare away birds. And birds migrate to other parts of the world during winter. That means that North American caterpillars often emulate the behavior of snakes in the tropics because those are the snakes that birds typically have to deal with. An imitation formed from a hemisphere away.

Okay, moving on. We have malarian mimicry, the only kind of mimicry that is mutually beneficial to both model and mimic. Monarch butterflies tend to be pretty nasty tasting to a lot of predators. They signal this aposmatically with their bright orange wings. Viceroy butterflies use the exact same strategy. They taste yucky and signal this with bright wings. As predators learn to avoid unpalatable butterflies, a single common warning signal ends up being recognized. Not only is it easier for predators to only have to learn one signal, it's also better for both butterflies because fewer will have to die in the process of the predators learning what to avoid. So, both species end up mimicking each other and in this case look almost indistinguishable. Malarian mimicry is why both bees and wasps have yellow stripes. They're both flying insects that can sting. And because animals don't want to be stung in general, it serves them to have similar aposmatic cues. But far more than two parties can be involved with this. If there are several organisms in an area that share a defense mechanism, they can form a malarian mimicry ring and all start to look like each other. We see this with a variety of bumblebee species as well as poison frogs and coralnakes. This is helpful for all the mimics involved, but it's also helpful for the predators who can avoid all kinds of dangerous animals by only recognizing one signal. The only party it's annoying for is the biologists who have a hard time distinguishing between distinct species that look the same.

So, we've seen cases where the mimic mimics the model, where the mimic mimics the dupe, even when multiple mimics mimic each other. Now it's time for the mimic to mimic the mimic. Automicimickry is when a mimic mimics itself or a member of the same species. This is what the eyes of the pygmy owl look like. Oh, wait, never mind. Those are just black spots on the backs of their heads that appear like a set of eyes, presumably to ward off anything that wants to sneak up from behind. A body part mimicking a different part. Rubber boas duck their head beneath their body when threatened and stick out their suspiciously headlooking tail. Because a lot of predators go for the head, misleading them with a less vital body part can often buy the boa enough time to escape. We see this same tactic employed in the foureyed butterfly fish, which have eye spots at their tail end and even swim backwards when threatened to sell the illusion further. and in hair streak butterflies, which have a false head at the back of their wings, as well as false antenna that move in antenna-like ways. When scientists collect them, they often find them with rearwing damage, suggesting that this strategy actually works, and predators attack their false head, allowing them to escape.

But you know where else autom has been used? Military vehicles. The A10 Thunderbolt is sometimes painted with a false canopy on its underside to confuse enemies of its orientation and obscure the location of the pilot. Lots of animals have false eyes like moths, frogs, puffer fish. But surprisingly, even apex predators have them, like tigers with eye spots on the backs of their ears, and orcas, who I always thought had big white eyes when I was a kid. So, what exactly do they need to be afraid of? Well, we don't really know. Some people think the eye spots protect them when they're young and just stay as they grow up. This might make sense for tigers, whose eye spots are on full display when they drink from water, a relatively vulnerable position, especially for a juvenile. But some think that eye spots can help with hunting. It's common for prey animals to go for the eyes when trying to escape. And maybe false eyes are there to make that trickier. I can see this being the case for orcas whose eyes blend in readily with their black exterior. Regardless, there is clearly evolutionary incentive to have fake eyes for all sorts of reasons. You would think that real eyes real eyes real eyes, but it seems that fake eyes can trick them quite easily.

Now, we also call it automicry when mimics use members of their same species as their model, which can only happen when there are vast differences within a species. Monarch butterflies, as we said earlier, can taste very gross. In fact, blue jays are often seen vomiting after eating one. But it turns out to be a bit more complicated than this. A monarch's palatability depends on the food that it's raised on. When monarchs are raised on cabbage, blue jays tend to find them quite tasty when they grow up. But when reared on milkweed, they are absolutely noxious. And so it serves the cabbage butterflies to mimic the milkweed butterflies as much as possible so that predators don't find out how tasty they really are. This is called browarian mimicry and it's basically bates mimicry just within the same species. This is a variation of a Churchill tank meant for recovery rather than offense, but it mimics an armed variant of the same tank using a fake dummy gun to scare enemies into thinking it's more than just an armored recovery vehicle. Sometimes entire inflatable dummy tanks have been used to trick enemies as well. Arguably, Browarian mimicry is something that humans do. People act like other people all the time as a form of mockery or flattery. We might pretend to be someone we aren't to attract others or scare them away. Sometimes we imitate each other subconsciously, adopting the phrases and mannerisms we hear from friends and family or even from TV shows. But acting like someone else is a bit different than copying the aposmatic signals of someone else, right? I mean, there's a social and personality element to it that's so uniquely human that it's kind of hard to call it mimickry in a biological sense, though acting in general isn't unique to humans.

This killed deer is flapping one wing because the other is broken. Wait, did it just switch which wing is broken? Kill deer lay their eggs pretty low to the ground, and when something that it considers a threat approaches, the mother will act as if it has a broken wing. This makes her look like vulnerable prey, taking the attention off her nest and onto herself. This kind of behavior was first noted by Aristotle. I feel like I know this guy from somewhere. In his history of animals, he recorded, "When a man comes by a young brood and tries to catch them, the henbird rolls in front of the hunter pretending to be lame. The man every moment thinks he is on the point of catching her and so she draws him on and on until every one of her brood has had time to escape. Hereupon she returns to the nest and calls the young back." And so Aristotellian mimicry is when an animal imitates some enticing behavior to distract predators for the sake of members of its group. Red squirrels make ventriloquist calls pretending to be their own young to lead predators away from their nest. Mento langers also do this. The male will call loudly so that the females and children can hide. Again, it's hard to call this mimicry. Definitions aren't always easily agreed upon by different scientists. And so, usually we just refer to these behaviors as distraction displays, which is a whole another topic worthy of a video itself. But I hope you can see the similarities to other kinds of mimicry where deception is cleverly used for survival.

And that leads us to camouflage, which is kind of like mimicry, but for the surrounding environment as a whole, rather than a specific model organism. But what really separates the two is the intention. Camouflage is a form of crypsis, where the goal isn't to dupe a third party like in mimicry, but to never be seen in the first place. That being said, there exists a perfect intersection between the two. And when this happens, it's called mimisis. Leaf insects are awesome. Stick bugs are cool. The orchid mantis is one of the most beautiful creatures on the planet. We also have these cattydids, which look like individual leaves. Here's a moth that specifically resembles a dead leaf. Pubirds like to stand still with their heads up and eyes closed in a way that eerily mimics a broken tree branch. Also, there are many species of leaf tailed gecko. Some of them resemble moss, and some of them, like the satanic leaf tailed gecko, have entire bodies that look like leaves. The reason they were called satanic is probably because some variations of them are black with red eyes. Here's a photo I found where someone put dragon wings on one. Sometimes organisms mimic non-living objects for the same reasons, like pebble plants, which look like stones, or the caterpillar of the giant swallow tail, which mimics bird droppings. Mimisis is like camouflage taken to the next level. And so, there's not really much to explain about it. It's just really cool to show off.

But there is nothing cooler in the world of mimicry than the mimic octopus. This is a creature that can change its shape and color to mimic 18 different marine animals that we know of and can even take unique forms on the fly for the purposes of crypsis or just for fun. Here's a full list of the animals that researchers have seen them imitate. But there are a few main forms that they seem to take most often. By sprawling all its arms out radially, the mimic octopus takes the form of a lion fish, mimicking its big spines with its arms. By hiding six of its arms and holding the other two parallel to each other, it resembles a sea snake. It even changes its surface to black and white stripes, mimicking the aposmatic colors of the venomous snake. And by tucking all eight of its arms behind itself and flattening its main body, it swims around as a flatfish. Mimic octopus selectively choose the forms they take depending on the situation. For example, a researcher once reported that upon being harassed by a damselish, the octopus took the form of a sea snake, a known damselfish predator. But beyond mimicking set forms, mimic octopus also possessed the ability to see something and intelligently mimic it on the fly, sort of like a freestyle artist. Because of this, the mimic octopus really does not follow the constraints found in other kinds of mimicry. So, we had to give its ability a unique name, dynamic mimicry, which I think should have just been called shape-shifting because that's what it is. But yeah, there really is nothing else like this in nature. We have to go to fiction to find anything remotely similar.

Okay, have a look at this spider. Oh, seems like this hungry bird sees it, too. It flies in to catch it and Oh, [ __ ] That's not a spider. That's a whole setup. The spider-tailed horned viper is probably my favorite mimic. It has a fake spider tail that it curls up and moves in a way to mimic the movements of a real spider. Meanwhile, it lays the rest of its body perfectly still, camouflaging with the stone, waits for a stupid bird, then bam, dinner is served. See, so far we've mostly talked about mimicry used for defensive purposes. But aggressive mimicry is just as employable. Hey, look at this beautiful red button that'll give you a million dollars for free. Oh, it was actually a subscribe button, which you should click the real one of and leave a comment. It helps a lot. What I just did is a really shitty version of what the spider-tailed horned viper does, mimicking something enticing to lure in prey, only to reveal their true nature once escaping is no longer an option. And many of nature's most ruthless hunters do the same thing.

The alligator snapping turtle sits in a river, mouth open, wriggling its tongue around like a worm. It's actually not its tongue, but an appendage called a vermapform. But regardless, this attracts an unsuspecting fish who gets its existence obliterated once it gets too close by the 1,000 lb per square in force of the alligator snapping turtles bite. Angler fish are known to do this as well, dangling a fake worm across its lure to attract a fish, then pop out and catch it. Turns out we really aren't the first to invent fishing. In the deep sea angler fish, instead of a worm, they use a light. In the darkest of depths, bioluminescence is the only source of light, and many smaller organisms use it for communication and other unknown reasons. This means that plenty of deep sea creatures will mistake the angler fish's lure as something small swimming around and approach it only to be met with this monstrosity. But when it comes to laying traps, few are better than spiders. Golden orb weavers are named after their yellow webs, which shine like gold silks under the sun. Pollinating insects like bees and flies follow nectar guides when scouting for nectar-filled flowers. These can be the bright colors that flowers often express, but can also be colors in the ultraviolet spectrum, which are invisible to us. The yellow reflective light that the golden orb weaver's webs give off can mimic these nectar guides and cause many pollinators to fly right into their webs. Other members of the orb weaver family like the silver argop add these strange zigzagged structures called stabilamenta into their webs and we don't fully know why. At first it was thought that it helps stabilize the webs but the stabilamentum tends to be loosely attached so this probably isn't the case. Then some scientists noticed that the way these web decorations are woven make them really good at reflecting UV light. When comparing the position of a stabilamentum in the web to the regions of bright UV signals in flower nectar guides, it seems that these complex weavingings may be an advanced UV flower mimicry to attract more pollinators into the orb weaver's web.

Luring prey is evidently very useful. I mean, as humans, we do it all the time. But it's also the strategy of the iconic fantasy monster, the mimic. By taking the appearance of a bountiful chest of treasures, dungeon-dwelling adventurers are enticed by the riches they could find within, only to be surprised by a glaring set of teeth or claws or pseudo limbs or whatever. Mimicry can be so fun and imaginative that we often find it in sci-fi and fantasy media. So the fact that animals have just been doing it for thousands of years in real life is pretty cool.

There are other kinds of aggressive mimicry in nature too. One being wclarian mimicry or cryptic aggressive mimicry. Blue streak rass are cleaner fish, meaning they eat parasites and dead skin off of larger fish. This is a mutualistic relationship because it both feeds the rass and cleans the big fish. This is a very common trade in the ocean to the point where large fish visit designated cleaning stations to get these services. Kind of like pulling up to a car wash. When visitors arrive at Blue Streak Incorporated, the RAS greet their client by performing a little dance where they rear up and down. But the Saber-tooth Blenny takes advantage of all of this by visually mimicking blue streak cleaner rass and mimicking their dances to a regional level. They blend in and the larger fish doesn't bother to fight them off. Then they secretly tear off scales and pieces of fin and even inject the larger fish with opium to dull the pain they're causing and give them time to escape. Wclarian mimicry is the direct opposite of Batesian mimicry. Instead of pretending to be intimidating, Wclarian mimics disguise themselves as harmless in order to approach their targets without raising suspicion. They are wolves in sheep's clothing.

The feathers of the zone tailed hawk look a lot like that of turkey vultures when they're flying around. They take advantage of this fact by flying amongst them, then swooping out to catch unsuspecting prey. And to bring up another fantasy example, Clarion mimicry is kind of what vampires traditionally do. As monsters masquerading in human flesh, they will charm you and invite you to their domain only to secretly be an undead carnivore. The saber-tooth blenny is different from most of the earlier examples because it's a parasite and not a predator. It harms its target, but doesn't kill it. Parasetism as a whole is a very complicated, disgusting thing. So, you can imagine when you involve mimicry with it, it only gets worse.

The green banded brood sack is a flatworm that parasetizes snails and pulses up and down their eyetocks. They do this to mimic caterpillars for the opposite reason that caterpillars mimic snakes. The brood sack actually wants to attract birds because they want their snail hosts to get eaten. They'll even go so far as to mind control the snail to move them out of shaded areas and be more obvious to spot. Once a bird hunts the snail, the brood sack is able to infect the bird and release its eggs into their poop, beginning the life cycle once again. Another fascinating example is the pocketbook muscle, which disguises its mantle as a fake fish. It wriggles its fish lure around in a seductive manner, and when a fish approaches, the muscle ejects a bunch of its babies into their mouth. The muscle larae then attach themselves to the gills, using the fish's blood as food for several weeks before dropping off and starting the cycle a new.

But perhaps the most famous type of parasitic mimicry belongs to the cuckoo bird, which lays their eggs in the nests of other birds. Not only do these eggs mimic that of the host species, but so does the hatchling, except the parasitic chick comes embedded with a devious plan. See, the cuckoo hatches just a bit quicker than its step siblings, giving it time to be fed sooner and grow to be bigger. It will then go on to bully the others to get more food for itself. And when mom isn't looking, it will attempt to throw the other hatchlings and eggs out of the nest completely. It's up to the host parent to recognize this and dispose of the parasitic child, but that can be difficult to discern when you're a bird. Here's a bird feeding what it thinks is its child, even though it's obviously grown into a different, much larger species. Cuckoo bird mimicry is called Kirbian mimicry, but from the parasitic side, it's called brood parasetism, the parasetization of another individual's parental care.

Similar to this is social parasetism, where a parasite invades a colony of usocial insects like ants. Ants have existed for a long time, leading to very complex organizations and behaviors, but also complex relationships with other species. Animals that integrate themselves with ants are called mercapiles. And Merchafilly doesn't have to involve mimicry, but it often does. And when it does, it's called Wasmanian mimicry. Here are some of my favorite examples. Rove beetles visually mimic ants and prey on them when they get the chance. So do many species of spider. The ant cricket doesn't look like an ant, but mimics the antenna movements and touch cues in order to be accepted into the colony. Large blue caterpillars use chemical mimicry and release communication pherommones to trick the ants into taking them into their nest and even bring them food. Wasmanian mimicry doesn't just involve the duping of one individual, but of an entire colony. So, while an individual ant is often the model, the super organism of all the ants tends to be the dupe. It's like an alien race disguising itself and living amongst us without our knowing. There's honestly so much more to say about Mccapilic mimics. Wait, Merchilis? Why? But Merchapili as a whole is just a really complex thing. It probably deserves its own video, which I will probably make someday.

Okay, so prey often use mimicry in a defensive way. Predators and parasites use mimicry in an aggressive way. There's one more big evolutionary reason to use mimicry to complete the trifecta. This is an orchid, but it sure looks like a bee. In fact, it looks so similar that it tricks bees into having sex with it. This is called puanian mimicry where plants mimic an insect to deceive actual insects into copulating with it so that the plant itself can copulate by leaving pollen on its guest. As you know, the vast majority of flowers offer nectar as food in order to do this. But puanian mimics prove that sex sells just as well. Puyanian mimicry seems to be primarily done by orchids, which visually mimic bees and flies and chemically mimic many of their pherommones as well. And it's an example of reproductive mimicry. Mimicry used to increase the chance of creating offspring.

Oftent times it's only the male species of a flower that secretes nectar or pretends to be a sexy bug because they're the ones that produce the pollen while female flowers are the ones that need to get pollinated. So sometimes female flowers mimic male flowers in order to ensure that they actually get visited to complete the pollination. This mimicry will attract pollinators that think they'll be getting nectar only to be ripped off. This is called biryanian mimicry and it's a form of interexual automicry. Contrasting this is the very similar dodsonian mimicry which is when a plant mimics a rewarding flower of a different species for virtually the same reasons.

While the term burian mimicry is generally reserved for plants, we see a lot of interexual mimicry in animals as well. In giant cuttlefish males, being bigger is generally better. Larger males can woo females more easily and are able to bully away smaller males from ever getting a chance. But this has led to the smaller males developing a sneaky cross-dressing strategy. Because of their small size and the cuttlefish's ability to make visual adjustments to themselves, small males can make themselves pass as female. They use this to sneak in and quickly mate with a female, then swim away, all while the larger male is floating there, thinking they're just friends, nothing to worry about. The strategy of smaller sneaker males pretending to be females is actually quite common in fish. It happens in salmon and peacock blennies, creating a divide where males of a single species are either exceptionally large or incredibly small.

Another situation where it's useful for males to mimic females is in bower birds who are famous for their complicated branch structures complete with decorations and an elaborate dance. Like most creative practices, coming up with a bower bird mating ritual requires a lot of experience and inspiration. So, juvenile males often learn from adult males who are already fullyfledged artists. But adult males in the middle of their masterpiece don't want any other males nearby. They want to attract a female. And so they'll chase other males away, juvenile or otherwise. Thus, juvenile male bower birds mimic adult female bower birds so that they can show up and learn things from adult males all while the male begins their mating ritual to what is actually a teenage boy. In fact, here's a case where a young bower bird male disguises himself as a female only to steal one of the adult males decorations and fly away with it for themselves.

During the American Revolutionary War, soldier Robert Sherliff was shot in the thigh and sliced across the forehead with a sword. For some reason, he begged his fellow soldiers not to take him to a doctor, a habit he had throughout his entire military career. But his wounds were too grave this time. And so, a soldier put him on his horse and took him to a hospital. It was only then that the doctor there discovered his secret. It turns out Robert Sherliff was a woman named Deborah Samson who was pretending to be a man in order to enlist in the army. She was like American revolutionary Mulan mimicking a male in order to do something that at the time wasn't allowed for a female. Now they ended up sending her home and she got married and had kids and wasn't really recognized for her services until after. But considering the various sex-based roles in human culture, both historically and in the modern day, I'm sure there have been a myriad more cases where humans have pretended to be a member of the opposite sex and engaged in interexual mimicry.

Okay, let's come back to some plants. Kerrion flowers are famous for being the stinkiest plants in the world. I mean, they're called kerrion or corpse flowers because that's exactly what they smell like. Many insects reproduce on decaying bodies, so they're naturally attracted to the smell of death. By mimicking this odor, kerrion flowers lure insects into thinking they've landed on a good spot to lay their eggs. But this is a brood sight deception because the flowers aren't made of rotten flesh, and so necroofasages larae don't have anything to eat here. The corpse flower gains reproductive potential through this odor mimicry, though, as they get to leave their pollen on the insects that they've tricked into landing.

Now, there are far more aggressive applications of mimicking reproductive signals as well. The spotted predatory cattid mimics the mating calls of female cicas, attracting male cicas to within its reach to hunt and eat. This is the only example of acoustic aggressive mimicry in nature. When analyzing audio recordings, scientists found that the same cattids regularly mimic the calls of cicas from several different species, including some from different continents. Fireflies in the genus furus mimic the light signals of females in the genus fotinis to attract male fotinis fireflies which they kill as prey. We know that this is done intentionally because furus females have their own signals for communication and reproduction that differ in duration and delay to the signals they use when specifically hunting other species of firefly. This tactic of faking signals of a sexually receptive female in order to hunt males of a different species is called wleakian mimicry. In essence, it's the same as luring prey, which we talked about earlier with aggressive mimicry. The only difference is that mimics use sexual signals as bait rather than food.

Bola spiders release the sex pherommones of female moth flies in order to attract male moth flies. When they get their prey within range, they produce a ball of silk and throw it at them, ins snaring their target in a ranged attack, just as one would do with a man-made bola. Unlike the generalist Catty didids, each species of bola spider is specialized to a single species of mothfly, meaning they each release only the specific pherommones of their target species. And different bola spiders don't compete with each other for the same prey. Oh, and as one more example, the mimic octopus has been seen pretending to be a crab looking to mate in order to approach a crab that it actually wanted to hunt.

And lastly, we have the one kind of mimicry that was actually created by humans. Because of farming, many species of plants have been labeled annoying wheats, while others have been seen as useful crops. Human farmers pull weeds and plant crops, which has created an unintentional artificial selection for the weeds to mimic crops because that way they can trick the farmers into replanting them and live for another year. This is called Vavalovian mimicry and it's a process that's been going on since the Neolithic period. Both rye and oats were originally Vavalovian mimics of wheat and barley, but at the end of a growing season, wheat produces seeds while wild rye doesn't. So farmers would collect wheat seeds while leaving rye to die. But eventually some lines of rye began to show seeds and they duped farmers into taking them and replanting them. Amazingly, over the years of selection, domesticated rye has actually become usable as a crop we can eat today. So this is actually a case of a mimic going fake it till you make it and transitioning into its own thing.

You may have noticed that other than this case, humans aren't really involved in many mimicry systems. We don't overtly mimic any other species, and no species really mimics us. That said, there's a lot that we can learn from mimicry that we can employ for ourselves. We've created fake worms to use as bait to lure prey, just like angler fish and snapping turtles. If you live in an area with a lot of deer flies, these fake dragon flies can actually work at scaring them away. Scarecrows mimic us and are meant to deter birds from getting at our crops. We may not have mimicry inherently in our evolution, but we can still make use of it through our inventions and intelligence. If you think about the many diverse, cruel periods in history, how many people hid their religion, true opinions, or ethnicity in order to survive and blend in, just like defensive mimicry, how many psychopathic murderers fake who they are to get closer to their victims, like cryptic aggressive mimicry. Don't even get me started on what we'll pretend to be like for reproductive reasons. Mimicry is all around us, but it's especially refreshing when you see that it's also all around the natural world in starkly different ways. So, I hope you enjoyed hearing all about it. Thanks for watching.