The Top 10 World's Best Mimicry Animals (NEW!)

TCE

"That's fucking illegal"
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Hey guys, another one of my threads.

As I always state, this list isn’t going to be perfect, so I always encourage people to make their own top ten-twenty lists with their own research. This is the best I came up with, with my own knowledge and as you know, I am very involved with animals. Please do not take these lists so seriously and just enjoy them for what they are, considering they are just meant to be a bit of fun. With what I’ve studied over the years, I always want to show everyone my own research so it’s all in good nature.

This list is in no particular order. Just examples of my personal favorite mimicry animals, I want to show you the odd and bizarre ones. If you have any others that are some of your best ones and that I’ve left out (I know I would have left loads of great ones out, because I don't know them all lol :)), please share and I’ll add them in, thanks. How to define mimicry? There are plenty of animals that mimic other animals/plants, sound, smell etc. to their advantage of hunting prey, escaping from predators or impressing the female. Plenty of insects use camouflage to their surroundings so potential predators would leave them alone. Some of them have the appearance of twigs, leafs, bark, wood and some may simply be the same color as their habitat. Some sea creatures like rays dig into the sand to camouflage themselves or stonefish funnily enough, have adapted to look like stones.

Here’s a list of my personal favorite mimicry animals, the odd and bizarre ones, please share other odd ones you may know. Here is ten of mine.

Owl
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Almost all owls camouflage, obviously to protect themselves from predators but this picture in particular, I truly love.

Fork-Tailed Drongo
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These particular birds mimic the sounds of meerkats to steal their food. They can use the meerkats own calling sounds to make them run away and when they finally click on that they’re being fooled. The drongo then mimics another species (a predator to the meerkats) to make them run away again, to steal their food again.


Hawk Moth Caterpillar
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Looks like a snake right? When threatened it will pull in its legs and head and expand the front part of its body to make itself resemble a snake.

Robber Fly
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They can mimic large bumblebees and even sound like them to warn off potential predators, but they’re just a fly.
 
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Cuckoo
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These birds are some of nature’s most notorious conmen. Several species of this bird mimic a hawk sound to scare off smaller birds from their nests. Which they then, destroy the smaller birds eggs and lay their own, and the egg is mimicry of that of the smaller bird. They leave, which the bird who owns the nest returns only to be caring and catering for a cuckoo egg instead of their own.

Western Hognose Snake
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Not all the time these snakes do this, but sometimes if threatened, they’ll play dead by flipping onto their backs and release an odor of that of a dead animal so it’ll be left alone. Many snakes can play dead or are camouflaged as something dead i.e grass snakes can play dead by sticking their tongue out to one side between 2 – 30 minutes and they may coil themselves up or tentacled snakes mimic dead tree branches to capture prey.

Tiger Pistol Shrimp
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These shrimps can mimic large waves with their sound which stuns larger fish for capture.
 
Macroxiphus Cricket
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You think it’s an ant? It’s actually a cricket mimicking an ant in its larval stages.

Alcon Blue Butterfly
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The butterfly lays its eggs onto the Marsh Gentian. The Alcon larvae then leave the food plant when they have grown sufficiently and wait on the ground to be discovered by ants. The larvae then mimics and releases chemicals that smells exactly like ant larvae to con the ants into thinking it’s one of their own. They take it into their nests and put it into their brood chambers where they are fed by worker ants. When the Alcon larva is fully developed it pupates. Once the adult hatches it must run the gauntlet of escaping. The ants recognize the butterfly to be an intruder, but when they go to attack it with their jaws they can't grab anything substantial as the newly emerged adult butterfly is thickly clothed in loosely attached scales. Over time, some ant colonies that are parasitized in this manner will slightly change their larva chemicals as a defense, leading to an evolutionary "arms race" between the two species.

Mimic Octopus
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The species mimics a range of other animals including crabs, venomous sole, lion fish, sea snakes, jellyfish, sea anemones, and mantis shrimp. For example, it mimics a sole by pulling its arms in, flattening to a leaf-like shape, and propelling itself at speed. When spreading its legs and lingering on the ocean bottom, its arms trail behind to simulate the lion fish's fins. By raising all of its arms above its head with each arm bent in a curved, zig-zag shape to resemble the lethal tentacles of a fish-eating sea anemone, it deters many fish. It imitates a jellyfish by swimming to the surface and then slowly sinking with its arms spread evenly around its body

Lyre Bird
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These birds can mimic all sorts of different species and even other sounds it hears in the forest (like a camera, a camera with a motor drive, a car alarm and a chainsaw). They can imitate the calls of at least 20 different species which even confuses the original specie it is mimicking. Simply amazing.
 
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Those Lyrebirds are crazy


When I was in primary school we went camping for an excursion and there was a lyrebird that hung around the camping grounds. It would mimic all types of crazy stuff, one evening when we were washing up it started mimicking the sounds of the water going down the drain, it was nuts
 
Lyre Bird is awesome.

I'm surprised the mimic octopus wasn't included though.

 
weird looking creatures


Honorable mentions should go to the elusive Davidus Draimanus. They mimic any wild animal sounds.

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Lyre Bird is awesome.

I'm surprised the mimic octopus wasn't included though.



Good call, thanks for that, completely slipped my mind. I'll add it in.
 
came in expecting 10 varieties of octopussies,

TCE kills it again
 
the Caterpillar snake is amazing. all of them are great.
 
The caterpillar is crazy. I actually thought it was a snake until I read that it was a caterpillar, lol.
 
^haha. I was also convinced it was a snake till i read it was a cat
 
no parrots? the african grey/jaco is a better mime than all of the birds you listed. i also expected some chameleons.

 
no parrots? the african grey/jaco is a better mime than all of the birds you listed. i also expected some chameleons.

Yeah if you read the beginning. I said I know I've missed loads out, because I don't know them all so I was asking for people to please share some cool ones they know so I can add in.
 
no parrots? the african grey/jaco is a better mime than all of the birds you listed. i also expected some chameleons.

Lyre bird is the GOAT of mimicry.

African greys are good, but they still sound very bird-like when they talk (I know that sounds stupid but just bear with me). Crows and ravens can do near perfect impressions of voices.





Second video is a mixture of cute/terrifying.
 
Lyre bird is the GOAT of mimicry.

African greys are good, but they still sound very bird-like when they talk (I know that sounds stupid but just bear with me). Crows and ravens can do near perfect impressions of voices.





Second video is a mixture of cute/terrifying.


Thanks man. Crows are highly intelligent animals as well. you should check my top 15 most intelligent animals thread, crows are very high on the list.
 
Thanks man. Crows are highly intelligent animals as well. you should check my top 15 most intelligent animals thread, crows are very high on the list.

No problem. And yeah, crows are awesome.

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That was a good list you had for the most intelligent animals. I actually didn't know sheep were smart, lol.
 
I'm genuinely surprised that humans haven't domesticated Lyrebirds and made them available as pets.
 
No problem. And yeah, crows are awesome.

crow-picks-up-trash1.jpg


That was a good list you had for the most intelligent animals. I actually didn't know sheep were smart, lol.

Yeah they made the list over other animals I looked at, but they're right at the top.
 
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