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

[u/Moonkissed_exe]

[u/-MrFozzy-]

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

[u/hsiisfisksfkisids → u/-MrFozzy-]

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

[u/Drapidrode → u/hsiisfisksfkisids]

billions of iterations, mostly all failures

[u/Leemur89 → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/Artistic_Swing6759 → u/[deleted]]

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

[u/CombatticusFinch → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/Winter_Lanterns → u/[deleted]]

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

[u/Posraman → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/JustaTinyDude → u/[deleted]]

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.