Fun with Science Club®


			Poisonous snake mimics don’t always succeed... Carrie Straight 05.03.01 Poisonous snake mimics don’t always succeed in fooling their predators. Many insects and other animals look like their background to stay hidden. They are cryptic. There are other animals that look like something else. These are mimics. Some snakes are mimics. The scarlet kingsnake (Lampropeltis triangulum elapsoides) and the sonoran mountain kingsnake (L. pyromelana) both look like a coral snake (Micrurus sp.). Neither kingsnake is poisonous, but the coral snake is. Biologists hypothesized that the kingsnakes probably evolved their similarity to coral snakes because it protects them from being eaten. The other animals around it would not know that it was just appeared to be poisonous and they would rather avoid it than be bitten. What happens in an area where there are no coral snakes? The animals in that area might not know to avoid coral snakes and therefore would not know to avoid the mimics either. To test this prediction, a group of scientists created models of the kingsnakes and of plain brown snakes. They placed some mimic-models in places where the coral snakes live and some in places were coral snakes do not live. They compared the reactions of animals to the models. If the animals thought the mimics were the real thing, they would leave them alone. In places where there were coral snakes fewer mimic-models got attacked. In contrast, in places where there were no coral snakes, the mimic-models were attacked more.


			Pfennig, David W., William R. Harcombe, and Karin S. Pfennig. 2001. Frequency-dependent Batesian mimicry. Nature 410: 323.