SECTION 4
We're looking at animal behavior this week, and let's turn now, class, to one of its most dramatic manifestations-animal mimicry. Organisms that are good to eat, or that are attacked for other reasons, often develop devices to protect themselves from their attackers, In order to survive, and in order to reproduce and pass their genes on to the next generation. And one of these techniques, one of these strategies, is to look like something else. to look like something that is not good to eat, or something that is otherwise of no interest to the predator. An organism that does this, that resembles something else, is called a "mimic" and the thing that it has evolved to resemble is called the "model" , while the predator that it is trying to mislead is called the "recipient"-the one that receives the image.
Some mimics do this by adopting camouflage, which is a resemblance to something of no interest to its enemy, and by doing this, they become invisible, they are hidden. Many animals-insects,lizards,amphibians-mimic the abundant plant life in the habitat around them. I'm sure that you've seen green grasshoppers and brown moths that seem to be well-hidden on grass stems and tree trunks when they're motionless. But the Leaf-tailed Gecko,a small lizard in Madagascar,is a master at this. It avoids its enemies by looking exactly like cluster of old dead leaves. And there are various species of katydids,grasshopper-like insects,that have managed to duplicate the appearance of leaves with startling accuracy,in all stages of growth,some species looking like fresh green leaves and others looking like old decaying leaves-complete with leaf veins,weathered edges and mildew spots! These adaptations make these animals difficult or impossible for a predator to identify or even notice,and so these otherwise defenseless creatures are overlooked or passed by.