2024-03-25 06:45:13
Mimicry in the animal world unifies the visual appearance of beings that are sometimes very different in everything else, such as a baby bird of the species Laniocera hypopyrra and a toxic caterpillar.
This case of mimicry was discovered a few years ago in southeastern Peru by a team led by Gustavo A. Londoño, from the University of California in Riverside, United States.
These scientists, who were carrying out research on bird ecology, were very struck by the strange appearance of some chicks of the aforementioned species that had just hatched.
The chicks had velvety feathers with long orange hairs ending in white tips, something that Londoño and his colleagues had not seen in any other species of bird in the area.
Even more striking was the behavior of the chicks, moving their heads slowly from side to side, a type of movement that is typical of many hairy caterpillars.
The chick. (Photo: Santiago David Rivera)
The mystery began to clear up when they discovered that caterpillars of a similar size to those chicks also lived in the area, with fur of the same color and that moved their heads in the same way.
The toxic caterpillar. (Photo: Wendy Valencia)
The researchers concluded that the rare similarity between species at that stage of growth is a case of Batesian mimicry, in which two species have the same appearance but only one of them is provided with strong defense mechanisms.
In this case, evolution through natural selection has caused the chicks of that species, when they hatch, to have the same appearance and execute the same type of body movements as those poisonous caterpillars, thus making their natural predators believe facing a toxic caterpillar instead of an edible and easy-to-hunt prey.
The study was titled “Morphological and Behavioral Evidence of Batesian Mimicry in Nestlings of a Lowland Amazonian Bird.” And it was published in the academic journal The American Naturalist. (Source: NCYT from Amazings)
#Toxic #caterpillar #chick #Science #Technology #News #Amazings #NCYT