Question

When one animal copies the appearance, actions, or sounds of another animal to avoid predators, it is called

• A. commensalism
• B. mimicry
• C. competition
• D. symbiosis

Answer 1

The correct option is B

mimicry

Unpalatable organisms develop honest warning signals to display their unpalatability and are avoided by predators, who quickly learn after a bad experience not to pursue the same prey again. This phenomenon of displaying antipredator signals is aposematism. However two or more distasteful species, that may or may not be closely related and share one or more common predators, tend to mimic each other's aposematism, this is called mimicry or more specifically Mullerian mimicry. By developing similar warning signals, they enable their common predator to learn their unpalatable nature relatively sooner and more efficiently, compared to a scenario where the predator had to learn two separate warning signals.