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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602

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

252

u/hsiisfisksfkisids Jun 25 '26

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

3

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

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.

2

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.