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The Internet has many places to ask questions about anything imaginable and find past answers on almost everything.
Here are 15 animals who are masters of disguise. A Mediterranean octopus camouflages on the seabed. A common brown looper moth rests on a lichen-covered sandstone. Peter Waters/Shutterstcok A leafy seadragon, also known as Glauert’s seadragon, blends into a marine plant.
Stick bugs are perhaps one of the better known examples of insect mimicry. Commonly referred to as walking sticks, stick insects began imitating plants as early as 126 million years ago. Their twig-like appearance helps to defend them against predators that hunt by sight.
Mimicry is when one species “mimics” another species in terms of sound, appearance, smell, behavior, or location to protect itself. Camouflage is when a species changes to resemble its surroundings to protect itself.
Some animals mimic themselves as a form of protection.
Many butterflies become noxious and unpalatable to predators by acquiring chemical defences from plants they ingest as caterpillars. Other butterflies mimic the ‘aposematic’ or warning colouration and conspicuous wing patterns of these toxic or just plain foul-tasting butterflies.
For one, individuals mimic the facial expressions of others. This can lead to emotional contagion, or “catching” the emotions and moods of others. Verbal mimicry occurs when people match the speech characteristics and patterns of their interaction partners.
When threatened, puff adders hiss and puff up their bodies to make themselves look larger. They do this by using their lung—singular. Because of snakes’ long and thin body shape, most species only have a left lung, which, in the case of the puff adder, can extend to fill much of its body cavity, Jackson says.
Pufferfish can inflate into a ball shape to evade predators. Also known as blowfish, these clumsy swimmers fill their elastic stomachs with huge amounts of water (and sometimes air) and blow themselves up to several times their normal size. Some pufferfish species also have spines on their skin to ward off predators.
10 Weird Self-Inflating Animal Species
Deimatic behaviour or startle display means any pattern of bluffing behaviour in an animal that lacks strong defences, such as suddenly displaying conspicuous eyespots, to scare off or momentarily distract a predator, thus giving the prey animal an opportunity to escape.
Wolves, like humans, exhibit a range of different personalities: some are loners; some are lovers; some are leaders. Wolves and humans both use non-verbal communication. A wolf’s postures and facial displays express aggression and fear, dominance and submission without words.
If you encounter an aggressive lion, stare him down. But not a leopard; avoid his gaze at all costs. In both cases, back away slowly; don’t run.
Dogs Are Telling Us How They Feel In their wolf ancestors, staring is considered threatening and rude. Some dogs still retain that attitude. That’s why you should never stare down strange dogs or hold dogs still to stare into their eyes.
With so many opinions and misinformation about dog eye contact, it’s understandable why people wonder what eye contact means to a dog. Eye contact happens naturally; it’s part of normal body language. However, staring is considered rude and it’s scary to most dogs.