Animal behavior; Animal intelligence; Natural history -- Outdoor books
Then there are accidental resemblances in nature, such as the
often-seen resemblance of knots of trees and of vegetables to the
human form, and of a certain fungus to a part of man's anatomy. We
have a fly that resembles a honey-bee. In my bee-hunting days I used
to call it the "mock honey-bee." It would come up the wind on the
scent of my bee box and hum about it precisely like a real bee. Of
course it was here before the honey-bee, and has been evolved quite
independently of it. It feeds upon the pollen and nectar of flowers
like the true bee, and is, therefore, of similar form and color. The
honey-bee has its enemies; the toads and tree-frogs feed upon it, and
the kingbird captures the slow drone.
When an edible butterfly mimics an inedible or noxious one, as is
frequently the case in the tropics, the mimicker is no doubt the
gainer.
It makes a big difference whether the mimicker is seeking to escape
from an enemy, or seeking to deceive its prey. I fail to see how, in
the latter case, any disguise of form or color could be brought about.
Our shrike, at times, murders little birds and eats out their brains,
and it has not the form, or the color, or the eye of a bird of prey,
and thus probably deceives its victims, but there is no reason to
believe that this guise is the result of any sort of mimicry.
V. THE COLORS OF FRUITS
Mr. Wallace even looks upon the nuts as protectively colored, because
they are not to be eaten. But without the agency of the birds and the
squirrels, how are the heavy nuts, such as the chestnut, beechnut,
acorn, butternut, and the like, to be scattered? The blue jay is often
busy hours at a time in the fall, planting chestnuts and acorns, and
red squirrels carry butternuts and walnuts far from the parent trees,
and place them in forked limbs and holes for future use. Of course,
many of these fall to the ground and take root. If the protective
coloration of the nuts, then, were effective, it would defeat a
purpose which every tree and shrub and plant has at heart, namely, the
scattering of its seed. I notice that the button-balls on the
sycamores are protectively colored also, and certainly they do not
crave concealment. It is true that they hang on the naked trees till
spring, when no concealment is possible. It is also true that the jays
and the crows carry away the chestnuts from the open burrs on the
trees where no color scheme would conceal them. But the squirrels find
them upon the ground even beneath the snow, being guided, no doubt, by
the sense of smell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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