Caterpillar appears as a snake for camouflage

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So, which of you guys want to come to my country?

We have good coffee, tons of monkeys, women on light clothing and snake-headed caterpillars :)
 
Another argument for intelligent design. =D

But seriously, nature is some intricate, fascinating, scary shit.
 
OnionPowder said:
How does something like this even happen?



How?!
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this is a good question

how the hell does a caterpillar know what a snake is and what a snake does

did they sit down and have a talk about how to evolve these tricks

*Aliens*

seriously though I love Science and want a good answer for this one
 
Smiles and Cries said:
this is a good question

how the hell does a caterpillar know what a snake is and what a snake does

did they sit down and have a talk about how to evolve these tricks

*Aliens*

seriously though I love Science and want a good answer for this one
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The caterpillar doesn't "know" anything. Evolution works by happenstance. What would have happened is that some caterpillar initially had a mutation that looked unusual and other animals didn't eat it, either out of coincidence or because they were wary due to the caterpillar's appearance. Over time, the caterpillars who looked more and more frightening kept surviving because they kept not getting eaten. Natural selection developed a caterpillar that had an appearance that completely frightened away predators. There may have been many caterpillars that had unusual appearances that were eaten, but the ones with mutations that frightened away predators were the ones that survived, and eventually that became refined naturally based around whatever would scare away predators the most - in this case, a snake.
 
beast786 said:
One step closer to crocoduck
220px-Kirkcameroncrocoduck.JPG
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I had to rewatch the highlights of this. Man, what were they thinking with that?
 
Daniel Jackson said:
Animals looking like other things/animals for camouflage... this is exactly the thing I do not understand about evolution.
Evolution occurs in small steps. How did this caterpillar 'know' how to take all the right steps to end up looking like this?
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It didn't know. Thousands of caterpillars through thousands of generations with thousands of various markings live and die. Markings that aided the caterpillar survival get passed on to the next generation. Many animals fear snakes and caterpillars with the most snake like markings did best in this lineage. Rinse and repeat and the snake like appearance gets refined through natural selection. Other caterpillars develop scary eye spots, or look like bird droppings, or just blend in really well. There are millions of effective survival paths. This is just one of millions that happens to work.
 
So explain to me in layman's terms how something like this evolves. Do butterflies seek out mates with this particular pattern over time until it becomes the norm? If so, how do they recognize it in potential mates when only the caterpillar is capable of displaying it? If it's visible in the butterfly somehow, why doesn't it scare away mates like any other predator?

Or do the caterpillars just have chromatophores?
 
Deified Data said:
So explain to me in layman's terms how something like this evolves. Do butterflies seek out mates with this particular pattern over time until it becomes the norm? If so, how do they recognize it in potential mates when only the caterpillar is capable of displaying it? If it's visible in the butterfly somehow, why doesn't it scare away mates like any other predator?

Or do the caterpillars just have chromatophores?
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It's not visible at all, rather, the butterflies might not even select for it even if it was. The evolution is much more simple than that. Those who's colouration/shape looked more similar to snakes survived more often to reproduce than those that didn't, so over time the traits of "looking like a snake" where passed on and refined as they lead to higher levels of survival.

It's not a matter of the mates seeking it out, but more of a matter of the ones with the traits being there to mate more often.
 
I'm imagining a council of ancient cateripillars deciding which animal to mimic in order to better live long enough to turn into a moth and they where originally going to turn into a raptor but since the snake survived the meteor they decided the snake was superior and they held it to a vote. The snake one 3 -6 so all caterpillars spent the next hundred thousand years studying them.
 
Deified Data said:
So explain to me in layman's terms how something like this evolves. Do butterflies seek out mates with this particular pattern over time until it becomes the norm? If so, how do they recognize it in potential mates when only the caterpillar is capable of displaying it? If it's visible in the butterfly somehow, why doesn't it scare away mates like any other predator?

Or do the caterpillars just have chromatophores?
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Evolution is blind. There is no deliberate choice being made. You have a population, an interbreeding gene pool that results in various traits developing. The resulting offspring live or die. Some are unhealthy and die, some are unlucky and die.

Natural selection consists of everything that impacts a population: what do the predators attack or avoid, what diseases are present, what is the climate like, what foods are available. All of these factors act as a sieve and the creatures with the collections of traits that give them the best chances of survival refine what genes dominate in the next generation's breeding population.

No caterpillar has to look like a snake to survive. But if it has some markings that scare off a predator, then it lives. If the breeding population's most successful survivors all have vaguely snake like markings those traits get passed on. the best snake mimics survive even better than the more vague snake mimics. The snake mimicry is refined with each generation until it's near dead on because it works the best. It will continue to work well for these caterpillars unless a snake eating specialist shows up in their environment. Then they're screwed.

Evolution is like a game of poker. There are multiple winning hands your genes can deal you. Whether you win or lose is dependent on what hands your competition are dealt.
 
Derwind said:
Probably the caterpillars that more resembled a snake detered more predators on average and survived to pass on those unique genes until we have sonething like this.

I can't wait for the caterpillar with a human head. Gun be good.
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Its just a very bizarre NATURAL mutation.
 
Tathanen said:
Yeah, I've seen this exact thing in like 1988 in Ranger Rick or something.
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cajunator said:
Yes I think that was it! Lol.
Wow someone else remembers that magazine. Im impressed.
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!

I used to have a subscription to Ranger Rick in elementary school, and got those little educational animal cards in the mail - both the small ones and the ones you put in a three-ring binder.

I've definitely seen the exact picture, too, though I don't know where it was. It's almost become one of those iconic stock wildlife images, I think.
 
amazing how it can replicate the texture of a snake's skin like that

it's one thing to mimic the appearance, but to do it so convincingly...
 
Mumei said:
!

I used to have a subscription to Ranger Rick in elementary school, and got those little educational animal cards in the mail - both the small ones and the ones you put in a three-ring binder.

I've definitely seen the exact picture, too, though I don't know where it was. It's almost become one of those iconic stock wildlife images, I think.
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Holy shit. I have those animal binder things too. Its called Wildlife Fact file. I have hundreds of them somewhere at my parents house.
 
That's oddly specific.

I also think that if I saw a severed snake head moving around in a tree that I'd also want to leave it the hell alone, so I can see why it's effective.
 
What's amazing that centuries of caterpillars were observing how animals responded to snakes, and then decided to take it up as a form of defense.

That's some amazingly complex stuff right there - for that trait to be passed on from generation to generation genetically.
 
This is just amazing and scary at the same time.

SpinDasher said:
Real life Pokemon, I wonder what his first form was.
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I wondered whether playing with Pokemon made it difficult for some children to understand what evolution is. "No I was never a monkey! This is my first form!" or "Daddy are all those monkeys in the zoo turning into children once they gain enough levels to evolve?"
 
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