Poisonous larva or chick? | Science and Technology News (Amazings® / NCYT®)

Mimicry in the animal world unifies the visual appearance of creatures that are sometimes very different in everything else, such as a small bird of the family Laniocera hypyrra and a poisonous caterpillar.

This case of imitation was discovered a few years ago in southeastern Peru by a team led by Gustavo Londoño, from the University of California, Riverside, US.

Those scientists who were conducting research on the ecology of birds were very amazed by the strange appearance of some of the just hatched chicks of the above species.

The chicks had velvety feathers and long orange hair ending in white tips, something Londoño and his colleagues had not seen in any other bird species in the area.

Even more surprising is the behavior of the chicks, as they slowly move their heads from side to side, a type of movement typical of many hairy caterpillars.

A chick. (Photo: Santiago David Rivera)

The mystery began to unravel when they discovered that larvae of a similar size to these chicks also lived in the area, had fur of the same color and moved their heads in the same way.

Poisonous caterpillar. (Photo: Wendy Valencia)

The researchers concluded that the rare similarity between species at this stage of development is a case of Batesian mimicry, where two species have the same appearance but only one of them is equipped with strong defense mechanisms.

In this case, evolution through natural selection has caused the chicks of that species, when they hatch, to have the same appearance and make the same kind of body movements as those venomous caterpillars, making their natural predators think they are encountering a venomous larvae instead. Edible prey and easy to catch.

The study was titled “Morphological and behavioral evidence for Batesian mimicry in juvenile lowland Amazonian birds.” It was published in the academic journal The American Naturalist. (fountain: NCYT by Amazings)