Friday 7 December 2018

A Picture Of,

a dead leaf,


 you might say, photograph by enyagene/Flickr,

 'nothing to see here, move along' but wait a second,

that leaf looks suspiciously like it has legs, 

and as these two videos show it has,


when it comes to the art of camouflage, few creatures can match Uropyia meticulodina, a small moth capable of mimicking a dead, (there are a number of other mimics in the link), curled up leaf almost to perfection, its resemblance to a dead leaf curled round in on itself complete with tiny leaf-like veins is just uncanny, this living optical illusion spends most of its time on the damp floor of forests in China and Taiwan, and is quite small as can be seen in the videos, I wonder how many other mimics are out there waiting to be discovered, as in full sight they are so good they are still fooling us!


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