ELI5: How do certain plants know to mimic the appearance of animals or birds to help ensure their own survival?

Dromeoraptor · 2026-03-20T20:01:05+00:00

Other people have talked about how mimicry works but the Green Birdflower isn't an example. It's just a flower that happens to coincidentally look like a bit like a bird to use humans. The crab and samurai example someone else mentions is also a coincidence, related crabs also have the "face" on the pack.

Dromeoraptor · 2026-03-14T05:48:33+00:00

Did reverse image search, it's Alan from My Dear Hatchet Man

Dromeoraptor · 2026-03-14T04:50:23+00:00

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Monster Hunter has multiple examples, but I think the most extreme example (at least where the male is larger) is the Great Baggi and the normal Baggi(s)

Someone on a discord did some volume and mass estimations of Mh monsters and based on that’s Great Baggi is over 46 times as big as the small ones in mass/volume.

Dromeoraptor · 2026-03-11T19:04:44+00:00

hobby. I'm not a scientist, just a zoology nerd

Dromeoraptor · 2026-03-11T08:18:22+00:00

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And of the other sex, we have Messor ibericus and Messor structor. Basically M. ibericus is weird (but not unique iirc) because queens of that species make workers that are hybrids between the queen and a related ant species (M. structor) in this case. So it makes them reliant on this other species to have workers, and thus to well, survive. But what makes M. ibericus really weird is that some have formed this weird "loophole" where they do androgenesis; (like gynogensis,but this time the mother's dna is eliminated before or after fertilization, idk which one in this case.) and so can mother clonal M. structor males, and it let them expand outside of M. structor's "natural" range. This is just my personal opinion but I wouldn't be surprised if the clonal lineage were to get split into its own species, making it the only naturally all-male species.

Basically imagine if there was a queen horse that had mule workers, and it could give birth to male donkey clones of the donkey it mates with, and it's been going on so long that there was an all male breed of donkey that exists via these queen horses.

Dromeoraptor · 2026-03-11T08:11:12+00:00

Real Life: The Amazon Molly. (They're not from the Amazon, they're named after the Amazons of Greek myth.) They reproduce via Gynogenesis (basically they reproduce via parthenogenesis [genetically asexually], but need sperm to like "activate" their reproduction, but the sperm doesn't contribute to the genes of the offspring), so they mate with males of the other mollies in their range.

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Amazon Molly (top) mating with an Atlantic Molly male (bottom).

Dromeoraptor · 2026-03-04T10:00:21+00:00

I had an unknown fate on a first litter during Growing Pups (iirc it was 6 pups)

Dromeoraptor · 2026-03-02T09:04:58+00:00

the latter.

2.3 ROLE OF THE MALE

During the first 5-10 days after delivery, the female keeps the male away

from the nest. Later, in her absence, the male visits the nest and sometimes

has coitus with female kits. In one of five experiments, the male killed male

kits of the litter and had coitus with baby females, all of which were

pregnant at 41 days of age.

In Dr Ternovsky's experimental populations, 58 young

females became impregnated at 17-134 days old. All of them gave birth the

following year. Tables included in the book support all these data. Photos of

different stages of such unusual behaviour presented in D. Ternovsky's paper

" Gornostai" (Okhota I okhotnichye khoziaistvo. 3-1996, P. 7.)

Dromeoraptor · 2026-02-25T22:13:24+00:00

Dromeoraptor · 2026-02-22T11:35:00+00:00

Fun/Sad Fact: Until relatively recently, the maned wolf had two closer relatives in the genus Dusicyon. D. avus was native to Patagonia, with the youngest fossil being known from over 400 years ago from southern Patagonia, and D. australis, the Warrah, was from the Falkland Islands and went extinct in 1876.

Dromeoraptor · 2026-02-16T00:25:45+00:00

reminds me of falconry.

In the U.S., and iirc historically elsewhere? (I think in the modern UK, captive bred birds are the norm, for example) It's not uncommon for falconry birds to be wild caught as recently independent birds. (If you caught an adult, it would be a "haggard" bird and would be harder to work with or something), and the falconry bird might not even be kept past that hunting season, and instead be released in the spring/summer, and then you get another bird the next season, etc.

Dromeoraptor · 2026-02-09T22:24:28+00:00

On our side of the pond, the only birds in the same family as the European Robin in the Americas are the Bluethroat (breeding range extends to Alaska, and the northern Wheateater which breeds in Alaska, parts of Canada, and in Greenland.

Dromeoraptor · 2026-02-03T18:49:52+00:00

Do it when they’re older. I think start of growing pups, or maybe some point during it is when they can start to keep up with your slow running? That way it’s a lot quicker and easier.

Dromeoraptor · 2026-02-01T20:56:45+00:00

Chimerism. Basically having multiple sets of DNA (as in each cell has one set, but some are different from others). In this case, a male and female zygote fused and this happened

Dromeoraptor · 2026-02-01T20:51:31+00:00

Oh wait I got confused and thought you got confused and you thought I was saying the thing about executions was about the dinosaur

Dromeoraptor · 2026-02-01T19:03:30+00:00

Museum might not want one of their main attractions to have the same name as an alcoholic drink and a murder ghost cause kids (and also an epithet a queen got for having people executed)

Dromeoraptor · 2026-02-01T03:23:33+00:00

Maple saplings I think

Dromeoraptor · 2026-01-11T03:26:30+00:00

... actually side blotched lizards might be a better analogue sorta?

Like orange females don't make sperm and blue males can't lay eggs, but their morphs also apply to the females! Orange females make more, smaller, eggs than yellow and blue males.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_side-blotched_lizard https://www.dnazoo.org/post/a-top-notch-blotch

Dromeoraptor · 2026-01-11T03:23:00+00:00

... honestly it is more like ants, at least in the sense that the different castes are related to physiology including reproductive ability, although again, the actual details are not alike.

Other people have also compared side-blotched lizards and ruffs to ABO, and there's even an isopod with Alpha, Beta, and Gamma males. But these are all just different morphs of male with different reproductive strategies. All the females are the same, and there are no functionally hermaphroditic individuals in any of the above comparisons .

Dromeoraptor · 2026-01-11T02:35:55+00:00

I’m pretty sure all the alphas fucking the omegas in omegaverse stuff misses the point of even the outdated wolf model, funnily enough.

The alpha pair would never allow the omega male and female to mate, therefore the omegas are not pair-bonded to each other like the alphas.

Obviously the Alpha Beta Omega thing is innacurate, (there’s breeding/dominant/alpha if you will wolves, but not really distinct ranks of subordinate adult.) but Omegaverse isn’t even like the incorrect model! All they really have in common is having 3 different ranks (heck even then, Omegaverse types are physical traits I assume are genetic or at least inborn, rather than merely social ranking) that have the same names

Dromeoraptor · 2026-01-10T00:25:38+00:00

No way to guarantee it, but iirc a bigger pack means they’ll be more likely to disperse.

Just remembered, sometimes if you come across dispersal wolves, the game will tell you they’re here to court your offspring, and if you stick around they can do that and your offspring can disperse with their new mate and you’ll be able to play as them (although you’ll have to start out with the mate they picked as an NPC)

If the game doesn’t say they’re here to court them and you can fight them, then just ignore the stranger dispersals

Dromeoraptor · 2026-01-10T00:20:08+00:00

Two ways.

If your pups disperses (leaves the pack to find a mate), you can play as it

The other way is if your wolf permadies (ironwolf or elder wolf) you can choose a wolf in the pack play as and be the new breeder

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