amanda faucett CAMOUFLAGE AND MIMICRY

Being able to hide from your predators is part of surviving in the animal kingdom. If you are not able to burrow or dive into water you must be able to blend in with your environment. Camouflage and mimicry are the most interesting forms of surviving in your environment. They are both very different.

An animal who can camouflage is able to blend in with their environment. A predator will camouflage to catch prey and the prey will camouflage to keep from getting eaten.Daylight savings time or temperature change triggers a hormone that causes their skin to change. The katydid can blend into almost any environment with leaves.


One of the biggest uses for camouflage is when the seasons change. In the spring and summer there is trees and grass, so an animal can be brown or gray. During the winter when there is snow on the ground that exact same animals coat can turn white. Keeping it safe all through the year and ensuring the survival of their species.


Mimicry is using shape, color, and pattern to look like another animal, often one that is stronger and more feared than them. There are different types of mimicry. Mullerian mimicry occurs when the mimic is also well-defended. Speed mimicry occurs when a sluggish, easy to catch prey species resembles fast moving or hard to catch species that predators have given up trying to catch. Wasmannian mimicry occurs when the mimic resembles it's host (the model) in order to live within the same nest or structure. For example, several beetles closely resemble ants. The ants provide them with food, shelter and protection and can not distinguish them from other colony members. Batesian mimicry occurs when the model is more highly defended than the mimic.

The monarch butterfly tastes bad to birds, so they don't even go near them. The viceroys butterfly mimics, or copies, the pattern and color of the monarch butterfly's wings so that birds will leave it alone, too.

One of the snakes in the picture below is venomous and the other one is its mimic. Coral snakes are very easy to see because of their bright red, yellow, and black stripes. They are colored this way so that other animals know they are dangerous and will leave them alone. The Scarlet Kingsnake looks almost EXACTLY like the Coral snake, but it is perfectly harmless!

The one on the left is the harmless scarlet kingsnake.

Both of these ways are key for other wise helpless animals. Without these adaptations who knows if small insects would have survived up until now.

REFERENCES:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/animal-camouflage2.htm
http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/camo.html
http://www.blockpub.com/pages/rainbow/RWcamouflage.html

LINKS:
http://whitetail.com/camo1.html
http://bobolinkbooks.googlepages.com/royr.behrens
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucbhdjm/courses/b242/Mimic/Mimic.html
http://www.mprinstitute.org/vaclav/Camouflage.htm
http://ellerbruch.nmu.edu/classes/cs255w03/cs255students/nsovey/P6/P6.html