Mimicry: Please help me understand how

You would be incorrect in your guesses. Serious research has been done in the field.For example:In 2001 Dr. David W. Pfennig (UNC-Chapel Hill), Dr. Karin S. Pfennig (UT Austin's College of Natural Sciences), and William Harcombe (UNC-Chapel Hill undergraduate) studied the Scarlet King Snake (Lampropeltis triangulum) a non-poisonous snake that mimics the poisonous species Eastern Coral Snake (Micrurus fulvius).They designed an experiment placing artificial King Snakes and an artificial brown snake as a control within the region and outside of the region that the poisonous snakes are found. The experiment was to see if mimicing the poisonous snake reduced the amount of attacks in the region where the two snake species are found together.[1]They found that within the region where the poisonous snake was found 84% more attacks where made on the control group (brown) than the 16% of attacks on the mimicing King Snake. Outside the area however 83% of the attacks where made on the King Snake while the control only suffered 17% of the attacks.[2]This experiment does show that the mimicing King snake does get attacked less often within the region where Coral snakes are found. It also shows that outside this region such bright colors can be a disadvantage as it suffered not an equal amount of attacks as the control but more attacks.[1]Campbell, N.A., Reece, J.B. 2005. Biology, seventh ed. Pearson Education, Inc., pp.22
[2]Campbell, N.A., Reece, J.B. 2005. Biology, seventh ed. Pearson Education, Inc., pp.23

I agree, it would be nice. The experiment was written about in my wifes biology textbook and I just read about it a few days ago. Further information would be nice. Sorry for not being specific, the region in question was North and South Carolina. (I don't think this is important for the points you brought up however.) This is exactly what I thought. The interesting thing about the experiment though is that the animals in the region must be aware that such coloration indicates a poisonous snake. What else would explain the differences in the number of attacks within and without of the area? The experiment consisted of {hundreds} of snakes (thats the best information I have available). It got eaten less in the experiment. That is an advantage in natural selection From message 18: Why? I think this would follow any explanation of mimicry. Even if it only saves one in a million by fooling a predator, there is an advantage to looking like something dangerous.What process did the making is not important (for this point), either God made things to look like bird droppings or natural selection did.

I am still unclear of your position.- Do you think that there are no mimics?
- There are mimics but predators are not fooled?
- If there are 600 species of moth one should be colored/shaped like a wasp simply based on variety? Does this apply to all species that number 600 or greater?
- Is the wasp example fundementally the same idea you would use to explain the leaf mimicing insects?
- Why do we call them leaf mimics if not for being fooled? Do you think this could be some type of advantage to them?I re-read all your posts on this thread and I simply cannot understand your position.

Just for interest I thought I would post this short video. It looks like kelp but runs along the ocean floor. Walking Octopus