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Mimicry

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Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior

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Mimicry as an inherited adaptation is very widespread and can be found even at molecular level, mimicking viral antigens (Rose and Mackay 2000; Shahrizaila and Yuki 2010). Some plants and flowers display visual mimicry (van der Niet et al. 2011; Lev-Yadun 2017). Among insects (Lepidoptera), the butterflies and moths offer plentiful examples of mimicry of colors and patterns. The large group of invertebrates with exoskeletons from scorpions, crabs, and others to spiders (Herberstein and Wignall 2011), grasshoppers, and even cockroaches (Vršanský et al. 2018) furnish examples of mimicry. Fishes (Randall 2005), octopi (Norman et al. 2001; Gómez-Moreno 2019), and other creatures in the seas may mimic by supplementing colors and patterns with species-typical movements (usually locomotion patterns) of other, more dangerous species. Mimicry of most forms, be this visual or olfactory, is absent in mammals, but there are other land vertebrates such as lizards, frogs (Rojas 2017), and even...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Science and Technology, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia

    Gisela Kaplan

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  1. Gisela Kaplan
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Correspondence to Gisela Kaplan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Jennifer Vonk

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University Department of Psychology, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd Shackelford

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  1. Department of Psychology, Durham University, Durham, UK

    Zanna Clay

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Kaplan, G. (2020). Mimicry. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1898-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1898-1

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