The Art of Hiding

This activity explores an image of a moth with unusual markings on its wings, which serves as a phenomenon for learning about mimicry and adaptation.

Mimicry is an evolved resemblance between an organism (the mimic) and another entity (the model), which can be a nonliving object or an unrelated species. This image shows a moth with wing patterns that resemble flies feeding on bird droppings. This unappetizing appearance, combined with the moth’s unpleasant smell, keeps away predators that see only smelly bird droppings and hungry flies rather than a tasty moth.

The “Educator Materials” document includes background information and implementation suggestions for using the images as phenomena. The “Student Handout” includes the images and background information.

The “Resource Google Folder” link directs to a Google Drive folder of resource documents in the Google Docs format. Not all downloadable documents for the resource may be available in this format. The Google Drive folder is set as “View Only”; to save a copy of a document in this folder to your Google Drive, open that document, then select File → “Make a copy.” These documents can be copied, modified, and distributed online following the Terms of Use listed in the “Details” section below, including crediting BioInteractive.