[Jess] This episode was brought to you by CuriosityStream.
[echoing] Hi, I'm Jess Keating, and this is
Animalogic: Second Nature. I should like to tell you
that I've seen some of the experiments
shown in this film. As you can imagine,
technique is everything. [Jess] The natural world
is filled with imposters. These animals
disguise themselves to look like something
they're not, yet their goals
are not unified and different species use mimicry
for a variety of reasons. From defence to attack
to camouflage. [♪♪♪]
[Jess] Mimicry has formed
the basis of many of our imaginary worlds.
The replicants of and the shapeshifting Skrulls
of "Captain Marvel" to name a few.
And like all good science fiction,
they take inspiration from nature.
In a nutshell, mimicry is an adaptation
@that helps an animal, the mimic, resemble something else,
the model, with the intent of deceiving predators or prey.
There are a few broad categories of mimicry.
The first is Batesian mimicry. This is when an animal adapts
to look like a more dangerous animal.
This is the sheep in wolves' clothing method.
Species that use Batesian mimicry
generally imitate species that are aposematic.
Species that have evolved strong warning signals
to tell predators that they're dangerous.
This strategy works best when the population of models
far outnumbers the mimics, otherwise predators
wouldn't be particularly wary of their aposematic prey
whose bark turned out to be much worse
than their bite. Probably the most iconic
batesian mimic is the mimic octopus.
Unlike many other mimics, they don't just stick
to one model and are able to copy
a variety of species, usually venomous ones.
They can rapidly change their body shape,
pulling their arms back and swimming along the ocean floor
to resemble a banded sole, a type of flatfish that has
poison glands along the base of its fins.
If the mimic needs to swim across the open ocean,
they will display a striped pattern
and hold their arms up around them
to resemble the venomous lionfish.
And perhaps most impressively, in an act of defence,
they will bury themselves, leaving just two arms exposed
to resemble the highly venomous sea krait,
a sea snake with enough venom to kill an adult human.
In short, if it looks like a duck,
swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck,
it's probably a mimic octopus. Similarly, this is not a bee,
it's a hoverfly. These stingless flies disguise
themselves as bees @in hopes of deterring predators.
Also, this is not an ant, it's a mantis.
These baby predators have adapted to resemble ants
which are notoriously less tasty than mantids.
Likewise, this is not a snake, it's a hawk-moth caterpillar.
These caterpillars have adapted themselves to resemble
highly venomous vipers for obviously reasons.
And finally, these are not honey badgers,
they're cheetah cubs. Batesian mimics are
found all over the world, and they're particularlyúcommon
in butterflies and moths. Many species of butterfly
that are tasty to predators, like the tiger leaf wing,
mimic butterflies that aren't so tasty.
Like the famously disgusting heliconius.
Several species of moth with use acoustic mimicry.
They will mimic the sounds of moths
that are less appealing to predators,
like the tiger moth. The yponomeuta is an
extraordinary case as they're deaf but can
reproduce tiger moth sounds. Cuckoos use mimicry
as a core component in their parasite-host
relationships. Cuckoos are brood parasites
and lay their eggs in another bird's nest,
tricking them into raising their young.
[male announcer] The famous brood parasite,
the cuckoo bird, invades the nest
of a pair of titlark. The cuckoo will lay its own egg
in the nest while stealing away the
titlark egg to eat . And here come the titlark
to chase the cuckoo away, but the damage has
already been done. The eggs have been swapped.
Eventually, the cuckoo egg will
hatch and the titlarks will raise the cuckoo as their own.
[Jess] They've evolved plumage that resembles sparrowhawks,
and scientists have found that reed warblers,
a cuckoo host species, are less likely to attack a cuckoo
that more closely resembles a hawk
when they first invade the nest.
Likewise, several different species of spider mimic ants.
Though this mimicry comes at a cost,
the small ways they have to adapt to resemble ants
greatly reduces how many egg sacs they can have
and thus limits their reproduction.
[male announcer] Having made this super nursery,
the mother takes no more interest in her young,
and she soon dies. The hawk-mouth caterpillar isn't
the only caterpillar that's pretending to be
something that it's not. @The Easter tiger swallowtail has
false eye spots and an appendage
that sticks out of them that looks like a snake sniffing
the air with its tongue. It also looks identical
to Caterpie. The second group of mimics
are those that use Mullerian mimicry.
These groups all send the same honest signals
that they're dangerous. This is similar to aposematism
in that many are displaying bright colouration,
but the difference is that the entire group
will display similar patterns, mimicking one another.
This is why poisonous frogs are brightly coloured and why wasps
and bees share their iconic colours.
This can be seen in mammals by the white and black stripes
that honey badgers, skunks, and polecats share.
Emsleyan mimicry is when a deadly animal
mimics a less deadly animal. [male announcer] And
the teacher's explaining that there are two
kinds of attack, with warning and
without any warning. [Jess] This one is interesting,
because unlike other mimics, they aren't trying to
look as scary as possible. They're trying to
look kinda scary. If a deadly predator
is so deadly that anything that
attacks it will die, then the attacking predators
can't learn to avoid them in the future
and other predators will continue this rate of attack.
The deadly predator benefit from camouflage
rather than aposematism as it would reduce
the number of attacks. But in special cases, like
with the Texas coral snake, they're able to imitate
the similar-looking, but much less deadly,
false coral snake. This allows for predators to
attack false coral snakes and not die,
thus learning to avoid those types of snakes in the futureand
reducing the overall number of attacks
on Texas coral snakes. Well, this is our little
coral snake buddy here. I just kind wanted to go over
some of the coral snake facts that we have. He has that red
on yellow pattern @that everybody's talking about.
Same thing with the nonvenomous snakes
that kind of look like coral snakes,
they can also have the red and yellow pattern
that they coral snake normally has.
If you're too deadly, you can't teach lessons.
This leads us to aggressive mimicry.
This is the wolf in sheep's clothing approach.
Many of these strategies involve using lures to mimic things
that their prey eats. For example, the frightening
alligator snapping turtle has a tongue that
resembles a worm. They'll open up the nightmare
fuel that they call a mouth and wait for prey that are dumb
enough to try to each the worm that is patiently
waiting for them in what must look like
a cave of horrors... then snap.
[man] No animal can outsmart the allure of a lure.
Perhaps the most terrifying aggressive mimic
is the Iranian spider-tailed viper.
They employ both a mimic lure and highly effective camouflage
to hunt their prey. The tips of their
tails resemble spiders, and they will sit
perfectly still, flicking their tail to and fro,
as if it were a spider in hopes of tricking a passing bird.
@The black drongo is a small bird found in Asia
that mimics the alarm calls of several species
including the meerkat. Hearing these false alarm
warnings, the meerkats will abandon whatever they just caught
to flee for safety, leaving the meal all to the drongo.
Finally, we come to what might be the most beautiful
of all the mimics, the orchid mantis.
These gorgeous mantises have evolved
to be almost indistinguishable from orchids.
They use this camouflage when hunting.
They'll climb up an orchid and stand next to it.
When a flower-seeking fly comes by for a snack,
the mantis strikes. Looks really do kill.
The orchid mantis is just one in an amazing order
of highly camouflaged ambush hunters.
One of the coolest is the dead leaf mantis.
If you wanna learn more about this amazing insect,
@then you should watch "The Pray" which is streaming right now
on CuriosityStream. @The doc is only 11 minutes long,
but it feels like watching a Marvel movie.
It's action packed, tense, and shot in a way
that I've really never seenúbefore in a nature documentary.
The Pray has been nominated for
and won some pretty impressive awards too. It's nonstop action
from an insect that likes to spend its time
as still as possible. I'm honestly still
trying to figure out how they got some of these shots.
It's so freakin' cool, and you can watch it for free.
Just go to www.curiositystream .com/animalogic
trial with this promo code: animalogic.
If you love documentaries as much as I do,
then I think you'll really like CuriosityStream.
It's a subscription streaming service
many of which are fascinating nature documentaries.
They have another doc fromúthe filmmaker behind "The Pray"
called "DeBugged" which you should watch right now.
If you like those, you should follow
CuriosityStream on Instagram too.
They post a lot of really cool behind-the-scenes snippets
with the filmmaker and his creepy crawlies.
[Alex] And it was, you know, starting from a
really wide-angle shot, 16 mm, and then
as the camera moved forward, you'd eventually come into
the macroworld of the insect. You had to get a dolly set up,
you had to have a special type of lens that you
could zoom asúwell as focus at the same time. [Jess]úIf you're looking for something
cool to binge this weekend, you should sign up
for CuriosityStream. So what should we
talk about next? Please let us know
in the comments and be sure to
subscribe down below for new episodes of
Animalogic: Second Nature every other week.
Thanks so much for watching. [male announcer] Great
immensely powerful arms, each with its two rows
of deadly suckers. Ew, look out!
That slithering death is right on you!
He'll crush your bones into jelly.
Look out, boy! Look out!