Mimicry in animals is a common form of protection from predators. For instance, two distasteful or toxic butterflies may mimic each other for mutual defense, as the viceroy and monarch butterflies do.

Mimicry occurs when an animal evolves an appearance that is similar to another animal. Although this seems simple enough at first glance, natural selection has found a number of interesting ways to ...

What’s the cleverest way to avoid being noticed by a predator in a forest? Make yourself look like a dead leaf, of course!

People love going to zoos. You get a close-up look at wild animals, might get to watch sea lions jump through a hoop, and just might be cussed out by an unruly gang of parrots. Wait, what? That’s ...

Hawk moth caterpillars scare predators by mimicking snakes, complete with fake eyes, lunging movements, and scale-like patterns.

Nature's survival often hinges on intelligence and deception rather than brute strength. Animals like the mimic octopus, lyrebird, and fork-tailed drongo employ remarkable tricks, from camouflage and ...

In the early 1990s, Keith Willmott and a friend, both undergraduate students from the United Kingdom, arrived in Ecuador with impressionable minds and big aspirations. Willmott initially imagined ...

ON November 24, Prof. G. D. H. Carpenter, Hope professor of zoology in the University of Oxford, delivered the second part of his inaugural lecture (see NATURE of November 25, p. 813). Dealing with ...

CHANG: That is Yoko, a cockatoo that recently participated in a research survey looking at the phenomenon of vocal mimicry in parrots - what we often refer to when we say that parrots are, quote, ...

Eleanor has an undergraduate degree in zoology from the University of Reading and a master’s in wildlife documentary production from the University of Salford. Eleanor has an undergraduate degree in ...