Camouflage and mimicry

About Me:
I'm Mike Sherman. I'm a senior at olathe north high school. I'm in a class called student naturalist, and this is a project for that class. I'm 17 years old. I like to skateboard, and that's about all.

Camouflage and mimicry are both techniques used by animals to evade preditors in an attempt to stay alive. Camouflage is blending in with the environment to the point that other things can't see you. It doesn't have to be the traditional shades of green and black splotches. You can camouflage to anything, simply by being in front of something that is the same color. Mimicry is pretending to be something else. A harmless herbavore could pretend to be a deadly predator to intimidate its' enemies. Many different animals use these techniques to insure there survival in the dog eat dog animal world. The strong will survive, but the sneaky have just as good of a chance.


Milk Snake (Above)...Coral Snake (Below)
An animal that uses mimicry to entice fear in it's enemies is the milk snake. The harmless milk snake is colored like the deadly coral snake. The only difference between the two is the order in which the colored stripes come. The coral snakes colored stripes go red, followed by yellow, followed by black. The milk snakes colored stripes come in the order of red, followed by black, followed by yellow. Many people remember this by the common saying "red and yellow killed a fellow, red and black friend to jack". There are some exceptions to this saying, but for the most common circumstances it stands correct.




Another user of mimicry is the Hawk Moth Catepillar. It cleverly mimics, or acts like, a snake to fool its predators. This is a very good defense mechanism for the nearly otherwise defenseless caterpillar. The crazy thing is, it really does look like a snake. Take a look for yourself.

Alot of various animals, both predators and prey, take advantage of the use of camouflage. Predators disquise themselves as various inanimate objects to draw the prey near, and prey does the same hoping to remain unseen, and alive. This technique is used by everything from insects and harmless creatures, to the most deadly animals in the world. Humans have even been known to use camouflage in many different tasks, from war to hide and seek. The top picture to the right is of a frog from Madagascar. I couldn't find its common name, but it blends in with the mud and trees of its surroundings. The next picture down is of the Arctic Fox. It's color changes with the seasons. During the winter season the fox is colored all white. During the other seasons its fur becomes darker, and develops dark patterns. Next down is the tartan swordfish. It blends in with the plantlife in the backround which helps it catch prey, when it unexpectantly swims by, and evade predators that don't even realize it's there as they swim by. Don't get it wrong though, camouflage isn't fool proof. Its not like bam, i blend in, i'm set for life. It just helps out in the situation.

Camouflage and mimicry are both very common in the animal kingdom, and i hope you can see, and understand the animal kingdom that much better.

- Mike Sherman

www.thewildones.org/Animals/camo.html
www.mongabay.com/0306.htm
www.saczoo.com/3_kids/20_camouflage/camouflage_mimicry.htm
www.bugsincyberspace.com/mimicry_and_camouflage.html
www.bioedonline.org/lessons/mimicry-camouflage.cfm