Harmless or Poisonous? Butterfly Mimicry and Survival

If you were a harmless butterfly what would youto look at the Monarch Butterfly. What many
do to protect yourself? Nature has created manypeople don’t know is that the Monarch
ways for animals to protect themselves. OneButterfly is poisonous to its predators due to its
common way is called mimicry. What is mimicry?steady diet of the poisonous milkweed. Birds have
It is when a harmless creature (the mimic) comesover time “learned” the pattern of
to look like a harmful creature (the model).the Monarch and have come to avoid the
One butterfly, which is not so well known, is theMonarch.
Viceroy Butterfly. These butterflies are harmlessThe Viceroys inadvertently have come to look
and defenseless. They have no means ofmore and more like the Monarch over time. The
protecting themselves. However, they haveones that don’t look like the Monarch have
protected themselves by looking very much likebeen picked off over time. The remaining ones
the popular Monarch butterfly. To the untrainedwere those that looked like Monarch Butterflies.
eye, the Viceroy Butterfly and the MonarchThe Viceroy Butterfly, by looking like the
Butterfly look almost exactly alike. They have theMonarch, has benefitted by looking like the
same orange coloring and black markings, exceptMonarch as the birds avoid the Viceroy, thinking it
for one small detail. If you look carefully at theis a Monarch. This mechanism of survival is
Viceroy Butterfly, it has one barely detectablemimicry.
black horizontal vein going across its bottomMimicry is a common phenomenon that can be
wings. To the untrained eye, they look identical.found animals and plants and is a way that
Why does the Viceroy Butterfly mimic theharmless living things with no defenses can
Monarch Butterfly? To understand this, we havesurvive.