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This is called Mรผllerian mimicry. Toxic / poisonous / venomous / dangerous animals tend to look like each other. This enforces pattern recognition. You can see this within wasps / bees. The textbook example is the Heliconius butterflies. PC: Meyer A, PLoS Biology
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The other side of this is Batesian Mimicry. A non harmful thing mimics a harmful thing. Basically banking on that predators have learned established patterns. Here are a bunch of hover flies. (Syrphidae) They're all are generalized bee mimics. PC Alvesgaspar CC by SA 3.0
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In old textbooks you'll find that we thought the Viceroy butterfly (top) was a batesian mimic (not harmful) of the monarch. However a study in the 90's showed that both the viceroy and the monarch are toxic making them mullierian mimics Pc DRosenbach CC by SA 3.0
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Some of the most common batesian mimics are flies mimicking bees. Here's a convincing syrphid fly. PC: Copyright ยฉ 2015 Joy Markgraf
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We think that butterflies have eye spots because they mimic vertebrate eyes that might otherwise be a predator to their predator. Owl Butterflies (Caligo sp.)
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