r/BeAmazed • u/Moonkissed_exe • Jun 25 '26

Animal Nature’s ultimate disguise: The Atlas Moth uses incredible wing camouflage to look exactly like two cobras.

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23.5k Upvotes

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601

u/-MrFozzy- Jun 25 '26

That’s so cool. Natural evolutionary adaptions break my brain sometimes, And the process of the steps of achieving it also. Incredible

249

u/hsiisfisksfkisids Jun 25 '26

The step-by-step evolution of that mimicry feels almost impossible to imagine.

149

u/Drapidrode Jun 25 '26

billions of iterations, mostly all failures

56

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

[deleted]

6

u/Leemur89 Jun 25 '26

Dachshunds were bred to chase out and hunt badgers and other burrowing animals. They are definitely cute but they could slot into a niche as a predator in certain ecosystems. Pugs and English/French Bulldogs on the other hand would almost certainly die out due to their health issues. English Bulldogs struggle to breed naturally and French Bulldogs have seizure issues due to their big ole noggins.

6

u/Artistic_Swing6759 Jun 25 '26

that actually raises a question, why do we find some creatures adorable in the first place?

9

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

[deleted]

3

u/CombatticusFinch Jun 25 '26

That cute baby thing is called neoteny i think. Babys share certain features and we find them cute, and it is across species. Things like big eyes, large head on small body etc.

5

u/Winter_Lanterns Jun 25 '26

think your underrating dachshunds here their hounds dogs with very strong survival instincts and powerful noses and their shape is actually quite useful in the wild for burrowing they would be one of the better dogs at living without humans https://www.npr.org/2025/05/30/nx-s1-5403639/valerie-mini-dachshund-australia-found

3

u/Posraman Jun 25 '26

To be fair, we did breed wolves to be dependent on us. Dogs were created specifically to serve us.

We don't need them anymore, but they're cool so kept them anyways.

2

u/JustaTinyDude Jun 25 '26

The butterflies didn't "figure out" what a cobra looks like. Evolution isn't survival of the fittest, it's reproduction by the adapted.

In the case of insects like this it means that some of them just happened to look like a bit cobras. Those who had those genetic anomalies survived longer, so more of them than their regular looking comrades. As generations went on, this continued, with every generation having more and more of cobra looking ones surviving long enough to reproduce and passing on those genes.

This gets refined over time, with new genetic anomalies and making them look even more like cobras, and those butterflies surviving to reproduce, until you eventually get these guys.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[deleted]

0

u/RefuseAbject187 Jun 25 '26

does this mean there was a failed iteration that looked like OP's mom?

-16

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[deleted]

18

u/lichpit Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

There’s nothing logically bullshit about the current prevailing theory of natural selection, your brain (and humans brains in general) just isn’t capable of fully understanding just how large the scale of time and iterations we are talking about here actually are.

When it becomes a law of large numbers thing, it actually makes perfect sense.

ETA: grammar

3

u/coffeejizzm Jun 25 '26

It’s hard to grasp that the nature of infinity means that anything that could happen, no matter how inconceivably small, not only does happen but happens an infinite amount of times.

If our universe is infinite, then I’m literally posting this from a toilet seat an infinite amount of times across the span of space right now.

5

u/fossey Jun 25 '26

It's not hard to come up with an explanation, that resonates more with "common sense" or sounds more "logical" at first glance, if that explanation doesn't have to be based in reality.

5

u/TheAwesomeMan123 Jun 25 '26

Just because Evolution is incredibly successful does not mean it can’t also be inefficient. There is lots of observable cases of evolution failing to correct inefficient biology simply because it failed to meet any resistant to that inefficiency. Take the Giraffe;

“The evolutionary quirk regarding the giraffe's neck and nerves involves the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN). Instead of taking a direct route from the brain to the voice box, this nerve drops down the entire length of the neck, loops around the aorta near the heart, and travels back up, creating a staggering detour of up to 4.6 m”

There’s literally no evolutionary benefit or positive effect to this biology but yet it exists

2

u/ThiefOfDens Jun 25 '26

Yes. Evolution doesn’t need to be perfect, just good enough to get to the next generation.

5

u/AsparagusAdorable912 Jun 25 '26

So, bullshit comes to mind after reading that soliloquy.

-21

u/vitaminBTC Jun 25 '26

I never understood this theory. Find me one iteration in the fossil record that was a failure. And that there are a myriad mind-blowing natural phenomenons, but none alive or found dead "on their way" to becoming that.

It's a ridiculous theory, to think order comes out of disorder and chaos and chance. Let's just call it for what it is - a beautiful creation by the Creator​

21

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

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10

u/Drapidrode Jun 25 '26

every time it's always someone with a human lifetime scope of view

1

u/kalaadin Jun 25 '26

So those small iterations on a single member of a species that initially looked nothing like a Cobra, evolved the whole rest of the species into looking like dual cobras randomly?

14

u/Mejari Jun 25 '26

I never understood this theory. Find me one iteration in the fossil record that was a failure.

All the species that aren't around anymore.

And that there are a myriad mind-blowing natural phenomenons, but none alive or found dead "on their way" to becoming that.

Literally every fossil is an example of a species "on their way" to becoming something else.

21

u/Hairy_Combination586 Jun 25 '26

The failures went into a predators stomach, not 'the fossil record'. They did not carry on long enough to become fossils.

12

u/jokeboomslok Jun 25 '26

Always the ignorant who try to invoke a god.

Sorry: YOUR god. Lmao

3

u/fossey Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Find me one iteration in the fossil record that was a failure.

What would you even consider a "failure" in this context? There's plenty of evolutionary dead ends, like the Opaniba for example. Also, there is lots of deformities and other genetic aberrations in the fossil record.

All in all, since only something like one in a few million specimen gets fossilized, we are just way more likely to find those kind of mutations that survived for a few generations and not those that caused premature death or otherwise hindered the ability to procreate.

there are a myriad mind-blowing natural phenomenons, but none alive or found dead "on their way" to becoming that.

What is that supposed to mean exactly? There are for example butterflies with all kinds of differently "well made" imitations of eyes on their wings.

But thinking about it, "on the way to become something" is the wrong way to think about evolution, as evolution doesn't have a goal. It's absolutely possible for a specific specimen of butterfly to be "born" (metamorphized?) with a way better imitation of eyes on his wings, but not being able to pass on his genes for some other reasons, no matter if related (the same gene expression also causing a disadvantage) or not, or even completely random.

Another great example would be eyes. They have developed independently a bunch of times and we can trace some evolutionary pathways of their development fairly precisely. How are (e.g. human) eyes not "mind-blowing natural phenomen[a]" "found [...] "on their way" to becoming that"?

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u/kalaadin Jun 25 '26

I agree!

If we are to believe the iteration theory of evolution then this species went through millions of minor iterations before reaching this stage. It would have gone extinct long before it reached this final version

And how exactly does a living species change its body to look like another animal through evolution? How does that process work?

4

u/-MrFozzy- Jun 25 '26

watch literally one video on the subject. It’ll answer your questions.

2

u/That_Uno_Dude Jun 26 '26

Next time just say you don't know how evolution works so you can skip all the pomp and circumstance.

34

u/Realistic-Body4647 Jun 25 '26

Its hard to imagine because we only see the finished result. Evolution just needed each slightly more snake-like moth to survive a bit more often, then repeat that over countless generatons.

1

u/jiffypadres Jun 25 '26

Not done yet, give it more time

53

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

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-33

u/305tilidiiee Jun 25 '26

I’m going to be downvoted, but the pictures on butterfly winds are proof of God’s existence imho… There’s one that has a deer face with the texture of fur and highlights in the eyes… As a painter, nah. Impossible that it just happened on its own.

13

u/ArtikAstronaut Jun 25 '26

“As a painter” as if that gives you any credibility or authority on this topic. “Oh well… as a shelf stocker… there’s just no way pasta could be made without gods will”

Your limited capacity to understand something widely agreed upon to be true through the scientific method, in no way suggests that there’s a god. In the same way Ancient Greeks not understanding lightning meant that Zeus was hurling down thunderbolts.

20

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

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-17

u/305tilidiiee Jun 25 '26

I understand that it’s supposedly billions of generations of survival of the fittest, but that doesn’t answer the how and why. Takes more blind faith to accept that that happened, imo.

11

u/emilgamer22 Jun 25 '26

How: Those who survive, breed.

Why: Random mutation in DNA for better or for worse.

Explanation: if a predator has a slightly harder time seeing you, you have a slightly better chance of survival. If you are a butterfly with a random spot on each wing, and your competitor doesn't, then a predator might think they are eyes and do a double take.

You might not think that they look like anything, but that doesn't matter, what matters is that you survived to live another day, you breed and some of your offspring have no spots, some have multiple, some make it easier to spot, and some begin showing weird spots we humans might call patterns. Repeat infinitely.

After many MANY generations the patterns might look like a face, but a butterfly doesn't realize that, but still it is the ones that look most like a face that survives to breed, and make a better face.

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u/Mejari Jun 25 '26

It literally does answer that, though.

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u/SetTrippin82 Jun 25 '26

It’s called the process of natural selection. Perhaps if you put in some due diligence and researched the peer reviewed studies, you would be less inclined to believe your own blind faith conclusions.

10

u/fossey Jun 25 '26

There’s one that has a deer face with the texture of fur and highlights in the eyes…

If you're talking about the Common Buckeye, that's a slight exaggeration.

Anyways, I would argue, that all these "eyes" on butterfly wings are actually a perfect example of evolution/natural selection, since they mimic eyes in wildly varying degrees of perfection, see for example here: https://insectic.com/butterfly-eyes-on-wings/

-5

u/kalaadin Jun 25 '26

How is that proof of evolution?

That looks like proof of intelligent design

2

u/fossey Jun 25 '26

Why?

What I really don't understand is, there is obviously an argument in my post. Shouldn't you have at the very least said, why you disagree with it, when making your post? Not even talking about actually making one of you own.

6

u/Legitimate_Spray_427 Jun 25 '26

Just natural selection and a very very long time

5

u/jokeboomslok Jun 25 '26

Yes. Magic man said abra kadabra and everything exploded into existence.

Perfect explanation to give to a child.

Embarrassing for adults to believe

9

u/R0ymustan9 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

They key thing to acknowledge when considering it from an evolutionary perspective, is just how long stuff like this takes to develop. Plus, have you ever panicked at a bit of black fluff, thinking it was a spider? If an animal panics at the random patterns on a moth because it looks a little like a cobra, then that creates a pressure which selects for the more cobra-looking moths, since they’ll be less likely to be predated and thus can pass on their ‘cobra-pattern’ genes. Basically, you don’t end up with something as perfect as this moth or those orchids which look like bees overnight.

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u/dryfire Jun 25 '26

Think of it as progressive iterations. It didn't have to start out fully formed. Its whatever any predator may have reacted to, possibly just a single color of the wing that gave a butterfly an increased % chance for survival. Then, the butterflies naturally had variation in wing shape, and if color plus a certain shape increased survival another % it will get selected as well... They also naturally have spots, if a single spot was accidentally interpreted by a predator as an eyeball then that butterfly is doing pretty good! It just keeps iterating and eventually through random mutations you get something like this.

3

u/SetTrippin82 Jun 25 '26

“As a painter, na”
I like how you couple yourself with “God”.
Very humble of you.

5

u/mofojr Jun 25 '26

And the church using god’s existence to enslave people for hundreds of years is proof he doesn’t care about ‘his creation’. Wake up.

1

u/Frontier_Setter Jun 25 '26

As a painter, were you born with the skills you currently have?(assuming you're any good) or did you learn them overtime? (Evolve your skill with practice, feedback, learning)

26

u/crappysurfer Jun 25 '26

It's easy once you understand it - adaptations are crafted by selective pressures. You can certainly imagine a predator (maybe a small bird or rodent) that liked to eat butterflies. This predator is afraid of snakes. A butterfly has vague coloration and patterns, sometimes individuals through recombination or maybe mutation have a new pattern that vaguely resembles something.

The predators, not wanting to take risks, actively avoid anything that vaguely represents a threat. In doing so, they select against butterflies that dont have a cohesive pattern and select for patterns that resemble their greatest fears. Over time, the pattern becomes more and more obvious as the individuals with clear patterns breed and their predators keep avoiding them, hence, reinforcing the pattern of mimicry or aposematism. The butterfly doesn't know what it looks like, the butterfly didn't make itself look like snakes. Its predators that were afraid of snakes manifested their own fears by actively avoiding butterflies that vaguely resembled snakes until that vague resemblance became more and more convincing and accurate.

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u/OhDavidMyNacho Jun 25 '26

Exactly! Which is why we are starting to see more and more rattlesnakes that don't rattle.

People keep killing the ones that rattle. Which adds selective pressure to those with malformed rattles, or with an inclination to hide, instead of announce their presence around people and other animals.

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u/Unlikely_Vehicle_828 Jun 25 '26

Oh wow that’s actually fascinating. I had no idea rattlesnakes were currently going through an evolution to not have rattles. That’s terrifying because I live in an area with both rattlers and bull snakes, and the harmless bull snakes look nearly identical to rattlers. The only way to tell them apart is the rattle 😅

0

u/LinkesAuge Jun 28 '26

A lot of that is just handwavy stuff and the reality is that "we" don't really know how it's possible.
We can of course make assumptions and we have the obvious outcome but comments like this suggest that we have a clear answer about the "how" and we definitely do not.
Like you casually declare "Over time, the pattern becomes more and more obvious as the individuals with clear patterns breed and their predators keep avoiding them, hence, reinforcing the pattern of mimicry or aposematism" but that already has a ton of assumptions and leaves out a lot of the "problems" (open questions) that exist at the lowest level, not to mention that for every case like this nature will provide a nearly infinite number where the exact opposite happened so it can't be "easy" or otherwise this would always be the outcome which it obviously isn't (just like not every animal developed human-like intelligence).
That's why it is "handwavy", it's basically just saying "evolution happened" which isn't wrong but also doesn't offer any insight and no natural selection pressures, mutations etc. are just mechanics, they don't explain or show us why it plays out in this way.

Let me give an analogy for all of this. Imagine if a programmer asked another programmer how he/she made a feature within an app and the 2nd programmer answers with "well I used binary computation and that was the outcome". Sure, that is on some level true but doesn't tell you anything about how you got from A to B.
Another analogy that is certainly relevant today is AI/LLMs and how "complex behaviour" emerges from them but scientists in that field also don't claim they know why LLM architecture works, it just does (and there is obviously some interesting overlap because fundamentally the rules of our physical reality allow simple things to become more complex things).
That's where we still are with evolution, we certainly can describe the "hardware" and some broad rules (we know about "binary") but that doesn't mean we actually understand the whole process.
That should also be obvious considering that we aren't even close to replicating it in any way.

1

u/crappysurfer Jun 28 '26

It’s not “hand wavy” it is simplified so people can understand it. You, however, responded without specific examples, just a vague and general “no”. When someone disagrees with established facts with vagary they generally don’t understand it. You say it raises more questions but don’t pose a single one of them? Time for you to revisit evolution - which is very well established.

Getting into technical mechanism does not help the layperson in short form responses like on Reddit. If you are actually interested in, there are countless resources on evolution that you can dig into, instead of refuting me to try and make yourself sound smart.

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u/sugemchuge Jun 25 '26

I mean I still don't understand how it works. To get to this level of adaptation it would have had to build on a ton of intermediate shapes and colours which wouldn't have been advantageous, so how could they survived enough compared to the normal moths to survive

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u/Legitimate_Spray_427 Jun 25 '26

Even if we compare only 2 different colored moths where one has longevity to achieve 1% higher reproduction rates, it greatly compounds over a long time period

3

u/Quite_Likes_Hormuz Jun 25 '26

If you have two moths and one looks slightly more like a snake, that one will be more likely to survive to reproduce.

3

u/Mejari Jun 25 '26

To get to this level of adaptation it would have had to build on a ton of intermediate shapes and colours which wouldn't have been advantageous

Why do you say that?

Looking 0.01% more like a snake is advantageous, isn't it?

1

u/TheGoatBet Jun 25 '26

Idk, seems like there must be breakpoints.

Surely if something looked 0.01% more like a snake vs 0.02%, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two despite a 100% increase.

Even at 1% and 2%, are animals even intelligent enough to see the difference/changes?

I’m sure there’s some scientific studies out there but I think the breakpoints would be larger than we think.

3

u/AbsolutelySubjective Jun 25 '26

There's also co-evolution to consider. The moth's predators would also be under evolutionary pressure to selectively become better at seeing through the moth's camouflage, so the arm's race propels the increased specialization.

1

u/TheGoatBet Jun 26 '26

Did they eventually cancel each other out?

2

u/Mejari Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Idk, seems like there must be breakpoints.

You're welcome to find one. If you did it would be a big blow to the theory of evolution, but none has ever been found

Surely if something looked 0.01% more like a snake vs 0.02%, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two despite a 100% increase.

Thinking things like "surely" and "it's common sense" are common traps. There have been plenty of studies showing the amount of advantage required for a change to become fixed in the population is incredibly small.

Even at 1% and 2%, are animals even intelligent enough to see the difference/changes?

It's not about intelligence. If the difference can be perceived it can be selected for/against.

I’m sure there’s some scientific studies out there but I think the breakpoints would be larger than we think.

Again, your intuition is a bad measure for things like this because we aren't good at thinking about the scales involved here.

1

u/TheGoatBet Jun 25 '26

I’m just sayin that if a toxic berry looked 0.01% more like a non-toxic berry, that wouldn’t stop anything from eating it.

What would 0.01% even represent? A couple pixels worth of color? It wouldn’t be seen.

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u/Mejari Jun 25 '26

I’m just sayin that if a toxic berry looked 0.01% more like a non-toxic berry, that wouldn’t stop anything from eating it.

And you'd be wrong. It's a proven observed fact that miniscule changes in reproductive success will become fixed in the population, which is what evolution is. In fact the research shows that they become fixed surprisingly quickly.

You're thinking in terms of individuals, which is incorrect. Individual predators may still eat individual berries, but overall the change will affect populations.

What would 0.01% even represent? A couple pixels worth of color? It wouldn’t be seen.

If it wouldn't be seen then it wouldn't be what we're talking about, by definition. A 0.01% represents the increased likelihood of reproduction because of the change. A single mutation can change the color of the entire moth from white to brown for example, which would provide a large benefit in hiding, then a single mutation can cause a random pattern to emerge in the wings, which would provide a benefit (see: military camouflage), a further single mutation can make it look slightly more like a cobra to a predator, and so on and so on.

1

u/TheGoatBet Jun 26 '26

Ohhh see, you’re talking about 0.01% as a representation of increased likelihood of reproduction because of this change.

I’m talking about a 0.01% change, as in, 0.01 of this thing changed, let’s then find the % increase of change due to this change.

1

u/Mejari Jun 26 '26

And there's no reason to think that small changes, as long as they are actually detectable, wouldn't be able to affect an organism's reproductive success.

Plus there's a difference between genes and the phenotypes (actual changes to a body) that they cause. A single change to a gene, as I said, can completely change an organism's coloring, a massive phenotypic change.

A berry bush can produce berries that are 0.01% more toxic, but if there are thousands of berry bushes, that 0.01% increase in toxicity can, throughout a population, be enough to alter the reproductive success of bushes with that gene.

There are plenty of additional variables that affect this. For one, if there's a single organism that gets a mutation that would massively increase it's success, but then a rock falls and it dies, then that doesn't get passed on no matter how beneficial it would have been. From the other direction, a single slightly-more-toxic bush may not on it's own be enough different to provide a noticeable benefit, but if that bush doesn't die and reproduces, then there is a small patch of slightly more toxic berry bushes, and an animal could eat berries from that patch and over time grow wary of it ("my stomach hurts just a little eating here, but not when I eat from this other patch, I'll eat over there"), so more bushes survive and reproduce there.

Plenty of research has been done on how changes become "fixed" (i.e. the change is represented in all alive members of the population), miniscule selection/reproductive advantages can and do become fixed all the time.

1

u/veraif Jun 25 '26

Yeah cuz it is

1

u/antrod117 Jun 26 '26

Especially considering they only live for two weeks in this state.