Mimicry In Nature

Part I of Essay
THE GREAT IMPOSTERS Finding good day care can certainly pose a problem these days, unless, of course, you're an African widow bird. When it comes time for a female widow bird to lay her eggs, she simply locates the nest of a nearby Estrildid finch and surreptitiously drops ....

Part II of Essay
.... as others. So clever are their disguises that you've probably never known you were being fooled by spiders impersonating ants, squirrels that look like shrews, worms copying sea anemones, and roaches imitating ladybugs. There are even animals that look like themselves, which can also be a form of impersonation. The phenomenon of mimicry, as it's called by biologists, was first noted in the mid-1800s by an English naturalist, Henry W. Bates. Watching butterflies in the forests of Brazil, Bates discovered that many members of the ....