• Question: is there an animal that imitates another animal, for example a fish that imitates a dolphin?

    Asked by mogmiester123 to Jo, Kevin, Valeria on 21 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Kevin Mahon

      Kevin Mahon answered on 21 Jun 2012:


      Haha, yes there are lots! I did a lot of work on mimicry for my Masters degree and it is a fascinating area. The most common form of mimicry is Batesian mimicry where non poisonous animals evolve to resemble poisonous ones in order to avoid being eaten! There are loads of examples of snakes looking like more poisonous snakes and moths looking like beetles etc.

      The oddest examples I;ve found are some caterpillars that look like snakes and Humpback groupers (kind of cod) resembling the much deadlier Moray eel!

      And my personal favourite, the blister beetle, Their larvae grouop together to pretend to look like a female bee! When the male bee comes to ‘mate’ they all climb aboard him and use him as transport!

      Check out the photos!

      http://www.biodiversityexplorer.org/beetles/beetle_larvae_mimic.htm

    • Photo: Joanna Cruden

      Joanna Cruden answered on 21 Jun 2012:


      An animal that you may often see is the hover fly who imitates a wasp, I don’t think there are any fish that imitate dolphins, I could not find any 🙂

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