#mimicry

[apsciencebydan]

Late this afternoon I was about to turn back on my walk, and there was a small patch of leaf litter along the fence of the preserve I was at. Stopped to watch and see what appeared. After a few minutes I could only chuckle; the ant mimics seemed like they were outnumbering the actual ants I was seeing! So I figured I'd make a little game of it for y'all: how many ants are in this post?

1 & 2:

3 & 4:

5 & 6:

7 & 8:

9 & 10:

[thestuffedalligator]

"We call it vff," said the alien. "It's - it's hard to describe to a species without vffsense. Imagine trying to describe light to a species that never evolved eyes. But there are forms of life that are only perceptible with vffsense, and they've visited Earth and fed on life as long as it's existed here."

There was a pause.

Then the human said, "That's the worst thing you've ever said."

"Don't worry about it."

"I think I have to, now."

"No, because - well - you have a species of spider which pretends to be an ant, correct? It's not capable of understanding the fact that it's mimicking an ant, but it instinctually mimics an ant in order to deter predators."

"Sure?"

"Humans produce a vff to mimic varths, predators only perceptible through vffsense. The organisms that would like to feed on you are terrified of varths, and so they leave you alone. You aren't aware you do it, you don't have the capacity to understand you're doing it, but you evolved to instinctually do it to deter predators you can't see."

There was a pause.

Then the human said in a very soft and thoughtful voice, "And are there varths on Earth?"

"Yes," said the alien. "Everywhere. But don't worry about it."

[crevicedwelling]

another ant mimic jumping spider from Singapore. this one might have been the most antlike out of any spider I’ve ever seen, with a little crease on its opisthosoma to look like an ant’s segmented abdomen and posterior lateral eyes set to look like an ant’s angular head!

Myrmaplata sp.

[onenicebugperday]

Wasp-mimic clearwing moth, Euhagena emphytiformis, Sesiidae

Found in the United States

Photo 1 by ellen5

[lycomorpha]

Just in case you need cheering up, here's a lappet moth. Pls enjoy its delightful snout & excellent leaf camo. A+ soft and fuzzy moth friend 💖

Thank you from the Moth Promotional Board ✨🦋🐈✨

[gatekid3]

The mimics are getting too crafty these days

[herpsandbirds]

Black-collared Snake (Drepanoides anomalus), family Colubridae, Yasuni National Park, Ecuador

Coral snake mimic.

photographs by Vincent Prémel

[darksilvania]

GRUBODILE, CROCOON & MIMICROC (Bug/Dark) The Mimicry pokemon

This bug family has evolved over time to mimic the appearences of SANDILE, KROKOROK & KROOKODILE, with whom they share a habitat, this in order to intimidate any possible predator

GRUBODILE is based on the Sphinx hawk moth caterpillar and its ability to imitate a snake

CROCOON is based on the Owl Butterfly chrysalis, a cocoon that imitates the look of a snake

MIMICROC is based on the Peanut-Headed lanternfly and the Crocodile lanternfly

[minxinq]

[ OC ] gaia

a demon adept in mimicry who escaped from hell and slaughtered a magical girl. she wears her skin and uses dark magic to preserve the image of her host in order to trick unsuspecting victims.

age: 70000

mimic form: 5’1

true form: 12’0 (including horns)

species: mimic demon

sexuality: aroace lesbian

in her mimic form, she uses a variety of weapons to dispose of innocents she doesn’t deem “worthy” to inhabit. her favourite is the chainsaw due to its messy tendencies. being stuck in hell for hundreds of centuries and only now escaping to the surface, she is fascinated with man-made weaponry, and finds it satisfying to kill humans with their own creations.

in her true form, she has sharp misshapen teeth, sunken eyes, long thin hair, sharp horns and claws. she is not made to be comprehended by humans, so to mortals, her body is a thin, constantly altering and pulsing mass of black vines. this is used to disorient victims.

gaia’s mimicry can be identified by the blurry/muddied, almost glassy eyes of her hosts. she has yet to find a way to disguise eyes properly. this detail is almost unnoticeable to mortals, however to other demons and hunters from hell like lynne, its very easy to spot.

as gaia is a runaway sinner, she is actively being hunted by lynne. however, despite lynne’s orders, she seems to have formed a strange bond with gaia. whether it is genuine or simply a form of deceit to lure in and dispose of the mimic is unknown.

[marlynnofmany]

Decoy

Zhee stopped abruptly on the raised pathway, making one of many bug-alien hisses. This one was quiet and annoyed. The annoyed part didn’t narrow things down much for me, since he found many things irritating and wasn’t shy about telling the world about it (whichever world we were on at the time), but the quietness seemed significant.

I was glad I hadn’t bumped into him, and not just because he had the package we were supposed to deliver strapped to his back. (I’d volunteered to hold the thing, but he insisted that I keep my hands free since I only had two feet and was that much more likely to fall into the swamp. I’d wanted to argue that, but didn’t).

“What’s wrong?” I asked in an undertone.

“Them,” Zhee hissed, peering around a tower of sprouting plants and decaying wood that had once been a massive tree. The path curved off in that direction, blocked from view.

I crept forward for a look. Voices murmured. Then something splashed, and people were complaining loudly.

There on the path ahead of us were three Mesmers, all varying shades of gem-bedecked green to Zhee’s purple, waving their pincher arms about in irritation while a Frillian stood to one side with a fancy hovercart full of supplies and a long-suffering expression. The water rippled next to a half-submerged log. I wondered if one of them had thrown something or if a local creature had jumped in. Two of the Mesmers were holding bits of tech that I didn’t recognize from a distance.

Zhee was still hissing. “Why are they here, of all places? Blocking my way instead of getting on each other’s nerves literally anywhere else?”

“Who are they?” I asked. They hadn’t spotted us yet, busy as they were with complaining more than Zhee ever did.

“Rich idiots from my hatching year,” he grumbled. “They are not going to make this interaction pleasant.”

I looked around the swamp, with all its murky water and sparse trees. “We can’t really go around, can we?” The walkway was the only sign of civilization. While it was plenty wide for people to pass each other, even with hovercarts, it was the only one in eyesight. There weren’t even stepping stones.

“No,” Zhee said. “Wading through the water wouldn’t do us any good; we’d still be in sight.”

“I’m not even sure it’s shallow enough to wade through,” I said, eyeballing the water. It had all manner of algae and alien moss floating in it.

“It is,” Zhee told me. “I’ve delivered here before. But they’ll see us either way.”

“What are they even doing?” I asked. It seemed too much to hope that they’d just leave if we waited a few minutes.

Zhee jabbed a pincher into the soft bark of the stump. “Nature photography. Looking for rare specimens with their expensive cameras. Probably on the trail of a Shrieking Tatterwing or Hooting Fungus.”

“There’s a fungus that hoots?”

Zhee angled his antennae into a frown at me. “It’s an animal. Just looks like fungus.”

“Got it.”

Neither of us moved for a moment, just watching the trio of spangly birdwatchers and their assistant who probably wasn’t paid enough to deal with them. They really did argue a lot. As far as I could tell, the three of them were having two different debates at once: whose fault it was that the water creature had fled, and whether the glimpse of a wingbeat in the distance was worth leaving the path to investigate.

That gave me an idea. “Hey, are they likely to go off after a sound they haven’t heard before? Or something they can’t quite place?”

Zhee gave me a look. “Are you thinking of imitating an animal call from your planet?”

“Yeah. Either verbally or—” I leaned over the water to pluck something like a blade of grass from a spray of plantlife. “I can make a pretty sharp bird call with this.”

Zhee’s alien face regarded me, tilting slightly. “How?”

“Like this.” I stretched it taut between my thumbs, in the way I’d learned to do as an outdoorsy kid. There was just enough of a gap between my knuckles. With all my fingers spread wide, I blew through the gap, and it made a piercing shriek that could have been a bird.

The Mesmers looked around; Zhee and I shrank back out of sight. I adjusted the grass and tried again, this time getting a warbly call that sounded like a duck with a stuffy nose.

When I held my silence, I heard a heated debate over what kind of creature had made the sounds, and whether they came from the same one or two different beasts. But the argument wrapped up quickly with the reminded that they really were here to find a Hooting Fungus.

“Knew it,” Zhee said.

“This is worth a shot, then.” I let the grass flutter to the pathway and laced my fingers together into another childhood favorite. With my hands cupped around nothing and as airtight as I could make them, I again blew into the gap between my thumbs, this time just the top half. The air circled through into a satisfying hoot.

They got very excited at that.

“I told you! I caught a glimpse over there!”

“It sounded like it came from more over this way; it must have moved!”

“Hurry, before it moves farther out!”

Two splashes, then a third, and I was grinning in delighted surprise at Zhee. The quiet burble of a hover engine reached my ears as the Frillian took the sensible route off-road after them.

After a few moments, we peeked around the stump. There they went, off into the murk, complaining and shushing each other and aiming their cameras upward. Soon enough they were out of sight behind more trees.

Zhee stepped forward. “Well,” he said. “That was shockingly successful.”

“You’re welcome,” I said happily.

We strolled along the empty pathway, with plenty of time to get our delivery there in time.

Zhee said, “You should make those noises on the ship when no one’s watching. See if they think an animal got in.”

I looked at him in amusement. “You’re only saying that because you already know what it is.”

“Yes,” he said haughtily, which made me laugh.

“I’ll consider it,” I said, already thinking about what other animal calls I could bring out when my alien crewmates least expected.

~~~

The ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book. More to come! And I am currently drafting a sequel!

[sixteenseveredhands]

Abbott's Sphinx Moth: this caterpillar has a false eye on its rump; it mimics the features of a vertebrate's eye, and even includes a white reflection spot

The formal name for this species is Sphecodina abbottii.

From Minnesota Seasons:

The caterpillar is up to 3″ (7.5 cm) long. Middle stage (instar) caterpillars are whitish to bluish-green. In place of the horn found on other sphinx caterpillars, there is a raised orange knob on the eighth abdominal segment (A8). Final instar caterpillars come in two color forms. The brown color form has longitudinal streaks of light and dark brown mimicking the color of a woody vine. The green form has on each abdominal segment a large, pale green, saddle-shaped spot on the upper side and a similar smaller spot on each side. The pattern is said to mimic a bunch of unripe grapes. Both forms have a black, raised, eye-like knob on A8 complete with a small white spot mimicking reflected light.

When the caterpillar is pinched or poked, it often squeaks and bites at the attacker.

The fully-developed moth also has a unique appearance -- it has an ash-grey/blue coloration with streaks of pink and black.

Sources & More Info:

Encyclopedia of Life: Sphecodina abbottii

Insect Identification: Abbott's Sphinx Moth

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: Saukeville Field Station

Minnesota Seasons: Abbott's Sphinx Moth

University of Minnesota Garden Extension: Abbott's Sphinx

[apsciencebydan]

Very Normal Ant says hi and why are you looking at me, a Very Normal Ant

[crevicedwelling]

I was so happy to see one of my favorite examples of visual mimicry in Costa Rica! take a look at this Petrophila moth and a Nectopsyche caddisfly. notice anything familiar about the pattern they seem to share?

it’s the front view of a jumping spider! black round eyes in rows, and stripes for legs with gaps between them. the resemblance, especially seeing the mimics at actual size in person, is striking. both moth and caddisfly have a reflective white patch of scales around the eyes, making them seem reflective and alert.

jumpers are active visual predators, a threat to small insects but also to one another, and have good facial recognition skills for members of their taxonomic family who might be rivals or predators. it’s thought that a jumping spider, viewing a mimic, might be scared off or even consider it a rival and start a territorial display, giving the mimic time to flee.

many Petrophila and their relatives in the subfamily Acentropinae have the jumping spider patterns, and I saw a few species with varying degrees of spideriness. there’s a surprising amount of other arthropods that mimic jumpers, too, from planthoppers to cockroaches and even other jumping spiders with false eyes.

[onenicebugperday]

Peruvian shield mantis, Choeradodis rhombicollis, Choeradodinae, Mantidae

Photographed by tshahan in Belize

[lycomorpha]

~

From my 1st poker deck, Cryptic Cards, moth designs painted in acryl gouache. The deck is sold out now, but you can get uncut sheet to use as wall art here.

I still love these bugs. I need to make another deck. 💖🦋

~

[a-book-of-creatures]

Canthigaster valentini, a highly toxic pufferfish.

Paraluteres prionurus, a delicious tasty filefish that has been known to school with the above pufferfish.

Know the difference - it could save your life!