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Sometimes it pays to look like a pile of poop. At least if you’re a tasty caterpillar trying to avoid getting eaten by hungry birds. Because a study in the journal Science shows that even young chicks tend to overlook caterpillars disguised as dung.
如果你是一條肥嫩多汁的毛毛蟲，把自己模擬成一根樹枝很可能就能鳥嘴余生?！犊茖W》雜志刊載的一項動物實驗表明，生物擬態的效果立竿見影，只見過樹枝一面的初生雛雞就險些被擬態成樹枝的毛毛蟲騙過。
Animals have come up with some pretty clever tricks for keeping themselves off a predator’s dinner plate. Some use camouflage, adopting colors and patterns that help them blend into the environment. Others masquerade as something inedible, like bird droppings or twigs. But scientists got to wondering whether the two approaches are really so different. Maybe critters dressed as twigs also “blend in” so that predators just don’t see them. To find out, scientists presented some twiggy-looking caterpillars to two sets of hand-reared chicks. They found that baby birds that had never seen sticks before gobbled those bad boys right up. But chicks who were shown real twigs first took much longer to peck at the mimics, and did so more gingerly than their naïve friends.
為免做天敵盤中餐，很多生物都掌握著高明的防身術。其中一些利用自身的顏色和體形進行偽裝，融入周圍的自然環境，讓天敵不易察覺；另一些則將自身模擬成諸如鳥糞、枯枝這類無法食用的事物，稱之為“擬態”。科學家們想知道的是，偽裝和擬態之間是否真的那么涇渭分明，因為假若有昆蟲擬態成枯枝，不也是“融入”了環境，讓其天敵“視而不見”嗎？為了搞清楚，科學家們進行了一次實驗，他們將一些長相酷似樹枝的毛毛蟲擺到兩組人工養殖的雞崽面前。一組雞崽兒壓根沒見過什么是樹枝，不容分說便把毛毛蟲吞下肚；另一組雞崽兒則見識過科學家們展示給它們看的樹枝，當它們看到這些長得像樹枝的毛毛蟲就躑躅起來，試探了好一會兒才小心翼翼地享用了毛毛蟲大餐。
That means the birds could see the caterpillars, but were fooled by the costume, at least temporarily. Which, for a caterpillar on a leaf in the wild, could mean the difference between eating and being eaten.
這項實驗結果表明，后一組雞崽兒雖然能看到那些毛毛蟲，卻被毛毛蟲的長相給迷惑了，至少是被迷惑了一陣兒。而這一陣兒，對那些趴在野外樹葉上的毛毛蟲，可是生死一線。
