thalassarche: Large Hawk Cuckoo – (Hierococcyx sparverioides) -…

Thursday, June 2nd, 2016

thalassarche:

Large Hawk Cuckoo – (Hierococcyx sparverioides) – photo by Lim Swee Kin

Whoa. Is this Batesian mimicry? Because that would be so cool.

(After googling…) Yeah, sounds like it is. Awesome! I had no idea birds had evolved that.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/25Azr5j.

Tags: batesian mimicry, though now I wonder, if hutton's vireo has some evolutionary gradient, that made them look like rcki's, or vice versa, not sure there would be the same sorts of pressures as here, where it sounds like the cuckoo's brood parasitism is a factor, because by looking like a hawk they're less prone to being mobbed, by the host species they're seeking to parasitize. Posted in Tumblr by jbc | Permalink | No Comments »