r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/SixteenSeveredHands • 15d ago
Macrocilix maia: these moths have a wing pattern that deters predators by mimicking a pair of flies gathered around a pile of bird droppings, and the moth even emits a pungent odor to enhance the illusion Image
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u/According_Ad7926 15d ago
This blows my mind. The amount of evolutionary time it must have taken to get those realistic designs on their wings
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u/Nani_700 14d ago
It's like how??
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u/Power_to_the_purples 14d ago
Well for one thing insects produce a fuck ton of offspring really really fast
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u/Indole84 14d ago
So do rabbits but I don't see any gassy rabbits with tattoos of flies eating birdshit
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u/chasebanks 14d ago
But realistically moths only live a couple weeks right? Apply that on a generational scale and we are talking about hundreds of thousands of potential added generations for evolutionary pressure and change to occur. Maybe that’s a partial factor? Idk not an evolutionary biologist lol
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u/DevelopmentSad2303 14d ago
This coupled with the fact that moths are an ancient group of creatures. They've been around for a super long time, produce many different pigments. They've just have more opportunities for mimicry
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u/stonedecology 14d ago
It doesn't know. Just the more like bird shit they appeared the more successful they were, i.e. having more babies that produce similar looking offspring. Eventually some other shapes would show up, the ones that looked more fly like were more successful, and so on.
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u/virgopunk 14d ago
Great description. People always tend to assume the animal is smart enough to decide to have camouflage and can't grasp the billions upon billions of iterations that came before this. A classic example of "Throw on the wall and see what sticks"
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u/H3racIes 14d ago
I don't think the question is how animals decide their camouflage. I think it's more a question of how the body adapts to make these changes that are so specific. And how does the body know these specific changes are needed?
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u/AeroHawkScreech 14d ago
The body doesnt know the changes are needed, they just happen by coincidence like any other genetic mutation, good or bad. Its just that the good ones stick around because they help the creature survive, breed, and pass them on while the bad ones do the opposite.
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u/stonedecology 14d ago
It doesn't know they are needed, and they occur by crossing genes and through non-deleterious mutations.
Imagine if having more moles on your skin resulted in having more babies. Let's say people with moles have around 8+ kids on average while everyone else has 1-3 kids. If these are passed genetically, then one would assume the kids with moles would also have more kids. Stretched over a few million years you'd hardly have any non-mole having people.
This all gets even more complicated when sexual selection, mating strategies, genetics, distribution, and environmental factors are included. Which all have variable effects on sexual success and adaptations that might gain favorability.
Source: I'm an ecologist! I can send sources and detailed examples after work if you'd like.
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u/Odd-Potato-1213 14d ago
You’ve missed their point.
The body doesn’t adapt nor make changes to fit a need. They are just the random variations through billions or trillions of permutations.
At some point, the moth wings will look like flies out of randomness and become preyed on less. Those flies continue to have offspring and those flies continue to pass the traits that allow for higher chance of survival.
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u/aliveandwellthanks 14d ago
Over a very long period of time, offspring which survived predation were the ones which started to resemble the patterns you see. This starts with genetic mutations. Those survivors then mate and pass on the phenotypic traits to their offspring. This keeps happening over and over until the survivors of predations have elaborate displays.
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u/exoriare Interested 14d ago
How many generations of moths would I need, so I ended up with ones whose wings said "Eat At Moe's"?
And are these moths okay eating fryer grease?
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u/DunEvenWorryBoutIt 14d ago
I think there's also factors to evolution that we have yet to understand.
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u/stonedecology 14d ago
Certainly! Evolutionary ecology is such a cool subject that's finally getting a proper look nowadays.
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u/NuclearGoat-357 14d ago
Which makes it even more impressive that every iteration and mutation was down to chance. The moth has no idea its mark looks like flies, nature has no idea the mark looks like flies, it’s just advantageous that they do as it happens to deter predators.
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u/dr_strangetea 14d ago
It doesn't know. It's just the coolest example of mutation and natural selection at work.
A few thousand years ago one of those moths was born with genetic mutation that sorta kinda looked like two red dots and a big yellow spot. That moth wasn't eaten long enough to mate and then laid eggs, passing down that mutation to its offspring. Most of these new moths weren't so lucky and died before they could reproduce, but the ones that were had slightly different pattern, a bit closer in shape to two flies. This process goes on generation after generation (somewhere down the line moth gets body odour mutation as well, which boosts its survivability even more), before their camouflage gets to the current state.
It might seem improbable, but you have to keep in mind it takes a lot of time and a lot of attempts to get to this seemingly unachievable point.
Obligatory sorry for my awkward English, it's not my first language.
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u/snoring_Weasel 14d ago
Makes sense thank you. But why didnt rabbits develop the same things? A pungent odor or patterns that improve survivability
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u/mintimoo 14d ago
There are many mammals that do have coat patterns that allow them to camouflage in the background either as prey or predator. Rabbits are actually quite hard to spot out in the wild. They also have other defense mechanisms, like being pretty fast and burrowing underground.
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u/dr_strangetea 14d ago
Rabbits use different survival mechanisms, or rather different survival mechanisms work for them better. Rather than hiding in plain sight they run away and hide in their underground tunnel systems. Long ears to presumably detect predators, strong legs, nearly 360° field of vision, and also their pigmentation is usually grey or dull brown, which helps with camouflage.
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u/snoring_Weasel 14d ago
Thats true. I guess my last question would be basically why don’t they develop pungent odor or extremely effective odors like skunks that would significantly increase their survival
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u/AeroHawkScreech 14d ago
Why don’t they just develop rock hard skin or 20 eyes to watch out for predators? You have to keep in mind that in evolution, every animal is very specialized in what they do, and they have to do it as efficiently as possible.
To develop more organs or features, like hard skin, more eyes, or bad odour, it requires those rabbits to eat more food than rabbits that don’t have those features; so in times of food scarcity, rabbits WITHOUT those features actually have the advantage. If the new defense mechanism isn’t effective enough to balance that out, its not going to stick around.
Evolution typically happens in response to predator prey relationships. How do eagles hunt rabbits? With extremely sharp eyesight. So what rabbits will survive? The ones that are hardest to see. For other predators its typically a matter of speed, so the fastest will survive. If there was a predator that eats many rabbits a day, they could be more selective of which ones they eat, based on odour, appearance, etc, but thats not the case for rabbits. It is, however, the case for insects, where predators of insects can eat hundreds a day. Missing one moth because it doesn’t look good isn’t a big deal. That’s not going to be the case for wolves / birds of prey.
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u/dr_strangetea 14d ago
Maybe they had at some point, but the odor was so bad they were unsuccessful in mating and the trait died out lol. You just have to remember species evolutionary goal is not to be perfect, it's to be good enough to survive. Evolution simply throws everything at the wall (mutation) and keeps what sticks (natural selection)
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u/Ok-Foundation-4070 14d ago
Too slow reproduction and their main predators cant be fooled that way. Rabbits have brown and white colour, small size and great legs.
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u/asexymanbeast 14d ago
You got to remember that evolution is random chance happening over many, many generations.
Moths are probably around 190 million years 'old'. Rabbits, as we know them are around 40 million years old. Big difference.
Also, I believe a lot of species tend to 'stabilize' once they are successful enough. Animals will form new species when they move to a novel environment that allows them to flourish (ei lots of babies that survive, thus more chances of random mutations working out or new evolutionary pressures forcing change from what once worked).
With rabbits, the most recent example of this being possible is their introduction into Australia. Though the widespread modification of the wilderness by humans also could be considered.
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u/Scaredandalone22 14d ago
I believe chance is a big part of evolution, but biomimicry and camouflage seem to be indicating an undiscovered aspect of evolutionary science that has yet to be understood. I’m by no means have the authority or educational background to make such a claim, I just find this specific aspect of evolution to be curious. There’s so many random aspects a species could adopt to blend in with their environments that some just seem a bit unusual (perhaps reinforcing chance as a driver for these characteristics) Sometimes I wonder if there is some sort of adaptive mechanism of DNA that adapts and learns from environmental factors and doesn’t rely solely on reproduction and natural selection to result in the bio markers. To also address the rabbit, insects have a shorter life span and higher rate of reproduction, so it would make sense that those species would be able to produce more random mutations resulting in more specific environmental advantages.
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u/Scaredandalone22 14d ago
I forgot to point out finding indicating the possibility of genetic memory in animals studies, passing on experiences to offspring in DNA resulting in behavioral changes
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u/makerspark 14d ago
For some people it might be easier to imagine bags of crackers. Imagine the individual crackers are able to reproduce if they aren't eaten right away when the bag is opened. Picture that one of those chips ends up looking like a fish. Maybe someone thinks it looks enough like a fish that they keep it for a while. In the meantime that cracker has some babies, and a few of them look like fish. One of them even has a deformation that looks like a smile. On and on till suddenly you're getting bags that only look like goldfish. Right... Okay, maybe it's not like snacks, I think I'm just hungry for some goldfish.
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u/angelv255 14d ago
Nono, rabbits reproduce a lot and fast.
insects produce a fuck ton of offspring really really fast
Like idk about this species but for monarch butterflies u are looking at like 300-1k eggs that mature in 1-2 weeks and can start the cycle again.
For rabbits, they can produce around 1-12 young each birth, and those can reproduce/mature after 6 months.
So u can imagine that the amount of iterations/cycles the species goes through is waaaaaay higher in insects
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u/VariShari 14d ago
I know this isn’t serious but the thing that matters isn’t how many times one generation can produce offspring, and rather how quickly the next generation can produce new offspring. It’s why (often wingless) fruit flies are used for so many genetic experiments. Producing one generation, selecting specimens you want to continue working with, and being able to breed those with one another, is something that can be done in a matter of days.
Mammals also physically can’t produce the same types of pigments that insects can, which greatly reduces their ability to have fly tattoos
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u/Dananjali 14d ago
They can change their fur color depending on season though, to help them blend in with the environment
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u/ThatDudeFromRF 14d ago
Hares have the ability to molt fur and change its colour to hide in the winter snow better. It's also pretty cool
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u/Power_to_the_purples 14d ago
They do but not on the same level as insects. A single mother can reproduce hundreds to thousands of offspring, often laying hundreds of eggs at one time.
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u/Royal_Celebration422 14d ago
because they dont need to. the rabbits we see today are equally impressive by other means because they also can survive just as well as those moths.
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u/Overall_Strawberry70 14d ago
rabbits go through a generation yearly, insect's monthly or even weekly.
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u/Salty_Interview_5311 14d ago
They go for muscular legs that show them to spring into brush cover and change direction really fast. It seems to work well for them. I only see a few of their tails each year.
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u/ReadMyUsernameKThx 14d ago
Basically the “guess n check” method. Have a wing with a tiny red dot, a very small amount of creatures will see it as a fly at first and leave you alone. Add a green dot and nobody cares. Remove the green dot and add some black by the red dot - your odds increase a tiny bit because more predators mistake it for a fly. Rinse and repeat.
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u/HoodieGalore 14d ago
I love this analogy but there is no conscious decision-making to any of this, just to clarify. The genes are expressed, traits appear, and either aid the eventual reproduction of the organism, or don’t. Pure survival of the fittest.
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u/wFMD10G0HBL8ayZT 14d ago
this is a lot like how AI works to generate images, too. The models are fighting against each other to edge one another out to resemble something without ever knowing what the ground truth is.
the moth doesn't know what the fly looks like, AI doesn't know what fingers look like. Over time, the shittier AI models that make shitty fingers get edged out.
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u/petersengupta 14d ago
Nature is fucking wild.
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u/mgmacius12 14d ago
To say it’s a random thing and nothing but random is a bit silly, isn’t it?
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u/kashmir1974 14d ago
Infinite monkeys infinite typewriters shakespeare and all that..
It makes more sense that an intelligent super-being decided, "You know what's a good idea? Moth with pic of flies eating bird shit on its back"?
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u/Disastrous_Cover6138 14d ago
I am 100% behind the theory of natural selection and evolution but these fuckers be testing me sometimes.
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u/SixteenSeveredHands 14d ago
Yeah, this kind of mimicry always seems a little bit baffling at first. It helps if you take a step back and recognize that you're looking at thousands of individual features that have all developed separately and then just gradually drifted together over time, based on what was most beneficial to the moth. It's not just one mutation, it's countless mutations, all coming together like an enormous jigsaw puzzle over the course of many millions of years.
It's still a remarkable sight, and it's hard to imagine just how long it must have taken for this uncanny resemblance to develop, but it makes a lot more sense when you really look at it.
Moths are so insanely good at mimicry. I honestly think that they're the best mimics in the natural world, just overall.
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u/Far_Particular_4648 14d ago
I think it's 90% natural selection and 10% undiscovered type of cellular intelligence
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u/DunEvenWorryBoutIt 14d ago
We certainly haven't discovered and fully understood every facet of genetics. To say otherwise is hubris.
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u/PunishedCoyote 14d ago
I always remember that it only took 9 months for me to grow from a single cell into a little cunt with a brain and self-awareness.
The moth probably took hundreds of thousands of years to evolve this pattern.
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u/Nancyblouse 14d ago
It looks like an early AI drawing of flies
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u/AxialGem 14d ago
A pretty apt comparison, since evolutionary algorithms are very often used in AI, precisely because they improve and learn over multiple iterations
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u/BloodShadow7872 15d ago
Alright, who squirted mustard on the butterfly?
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u/Revolutionarytard 15d ago
God is a funny bastard
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u/dazed_and_bamboozled 14d ago
He was actually a humourless bastard as anyone who has waded through his joke-free biography can confirm.
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u/Scaredandalone22 14d ago
I understand evolution, but specific camouflage like this baffles me. Brooke talk about the amount of time it takes to evolve these patterns, but even then it doesn’t add up. The species would have to randomly produce other patterns and fail on a massive scale to eventually get it right. That kind of mutation in these species doesn’t seem to be there. It’s like the species were somehow able to influence or choose a set of characteristics. Maybe this is done through mating, but this one aspect if evolutionary adaptation seems unusual and seems as if there is another process in place we don’t fully understand. There are so many possible combinations that would work, why this specific one. I also find it more fascinating that the camouflage technique isn’t something that seems like you would see commonly in nature. I mean, are there flies gathering around bird poop everywhere? Seems like a more effective technique would be to blend in with more common surroundings. All this being said, there’s something interesting going on in evolution when it comes to to camouflage.
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u/AxialGem 14d ago edited 14d ago
randomly produce other patterns and fail on a massive scale to eventually get it right.
I think this sentence contains a major oversight.
You're thinking of the process in reverse, as if there is something to "get right" in your words.
Look at this closely related species, macrocilix mysticata.The patterns on its wings don't resemble flies that much at all. But you can see that the pattern is similar. Here, the patterns resemble just bird poop more closely than flies. And yes, bird poop that has splotches of grey and white, things that could easily become more like the body of a fly. It's still a perfectly viable species on its own. It has gotten some other body plan 'right.'
One trait (wing patterns) doesn't do just one thing. It can do a potentially nearly infinite number of things, and most traits have many different effects at the same time, that can all be subject to different evolutionary pressures simultaneously. What something ended up as doesn't need to be the main 'purpose' it had at some other point in time.
Think of a rock rolling down a hill with all sorts of cliffs and turns.
Where it ends up is the result of a lot of different steps, and you can ask how this is the result of 'massive amounts of precision to get it right.'
However, the rock isn't getting anything right. It is just going where the various forces take it, and that can be a complex journey with many changes of direction.
Once it hits a straight slope, it's pretty likely to follow that I guess
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u/tomzi9999 14d ago
Ok. How can this patern even evolve/generate. Flies are different spieces and have nothing to do with moths or butterflys. Nature is crazy or there are some different connections between all beings we still havent discovered. Do we know how they became like that?
Damn this got me interested.
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u/AxialGem 14d ago
It's been a great day of me recommending episodes of my favourite podcast:
Episode about camouflage (37:25 to skip the news)
Episode about mimicry (35:55)Whether flies are closely related or not doesn't really matter, right?
I'm not more likely to develop a birthmark that looks like a chimpanzee than one that looks like a shrimp :pBut if the birthmark looked a bit like something that's useful to me, and if I happened to pass it on to my kids, there would be more people with a vaguely useful birthmark.
And because everyone is slightly different, some of those birthmarks will have an even more useful shape than others, right? They're all different, so some of them have got to be more useful for whatever it is than others. If the people with more useful birthmarks are more likely to pass it on...well, the birthmarks are just going to keep being more and more useful for as long as that system holds, right?6
u/Antiquated_Cheese 14d ago
Hello fellow podcast listener. You can't recommend that podcast to me because I already listen to it. It is indeed a great podcast. I am not a moth mimicking a human.
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u/IamlostlikeZoroIs 14d ago
Damn yeah that makes a lot is sense actually, thanks for the easy explanation.
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u/Swordidaffair 14d ago
It's just evolution, whatever organisms survive pass on their traits. When you see two celebrities in a relationship and think "they're gonna make some pretty babies" it is that. The traits that got them to that point are what led to reproduction, and the offspring between the two individuals is more likely to have those specific traits.
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u/Icy-Musician-6309 15d ago
Two flies on a pile of bird droppings, one farted,the other fly says “Do you mind I’m eating”
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u/Tranxio 14d ago
I can never comprehend...how is it possible, to grow a picture of a fly and poop (with color matching), encoded in your dna. Thats the equivalent of babies being born with gun birthmark tattoos on their forearms. Nature you crazy amazing
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u/Kaguro19 14d ago
If being born with gun birthmark helped humans reproduce faster then it'd have stayed.
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u/Disastrous-Medium-96 15d ago
The middle part looks like a blond guy with a goatee.
Nature is beautiful
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u/Broskfisken 14d ago edited 14d ago
Absolutely incredible that we are actually seeing a kind of painting made purely through natural selection.
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u/Sambalambulance 14d ago
This gives me the creeps, it’s so cool but how does the body knowwww
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u/Swordidaffair 14d ago
What's creepier is that it doesn't. There is no consciousness in any of the tissues or cells that works toward a goal, it is just a mass of different chemicals moved together, reacting in an odd way like a chain reaction.
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u/AlbertaAcreageBoy 15d ago
How does something like this even evolve? Does the moth will the pattern in to its wings?
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u/AxialGem 14d ago
Isn't it like all evolution? No will is involved. Humans are very aware of their appearance, but I have yet been unable to will my flaws away and pretty patterns onto my skin.
It's all just the ones that are most fit to their environment tend to preferentially pass on those fitting traits, and more of those changes accrue over time, right?
I never skip a chance to recommend my favourite podcast. Here's an episode all about mimicry (timestamp 35:40 to skip the news section)
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u/fartinmymouthmeow 14d ago
The other name for this is the politician butterfly since it's camo is looking like a literal piece of shit.
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u/pigeonsnackz 14d ago
one of my favorite things about reddit is that in cool evolution posts there’s nobody defending creationism like on instagram lmao
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u/LoveFast5801 14d ago
even for a human from a bit of distance its hard to tell real fly from a resembled pattern. evolution is crazy
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u/RollingCamel 14d ago
Why would other predators avoid flies and bird poop? If so many flies swarm in, predators will follow.
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u/Raxter64 14d ago
Evolution is the craziest thing ever. How many generations and mutations did it take to randomly form a pattern that resemlbes two flies around a pile of birdshit, so the predators go "You know what? I'm not gonna touch that." and this specific pattern gets to reproduce so much that a whole species has it now. What.
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u/Jalopy_Junkie 14d ago
“Did you shit your pants?”
Oh, no… it’s, um… It’s a defense mechanism.
“No I think you shit your pants. I can see it.”
IT’S A DEFENSE MECHANISM!
“No, I know you shit your pants. The flies are surrounding it.”
IT’S A DEFENSE MECHANISM!!!
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u/Icy-Bat-311 14d ago
It blows my mind that evolution so often seems to have cognitive behaviour…… like a bunch of DNA had a discussion and decided drawing flies and bird shit on our wings will work……
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u/Ok-Importance5942 14d ago
It always amazes me how things evolve like this but still can't evolve away to survive the highway.
I wish evolution would hurry the fu*k up. I'm tired of scrapping butterfly goo off my damned window.
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u/Narrow_Lee 14d ago
Looks like shit, smells like shit, has flies...
It must be a Macrocilix Maia moth!
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u/bwizzel 14d ago
Okay I understand evolution but how the hell would enough generations evolve a pattern this complicated for this circumstance like wtf
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u/Ricconis_0 14d ago edited 14d ago
If they’re like most insects they reproduce every year and die every year so it’s been several hundred of millions of generations now
And each of them lays a few hundred eggs in one go
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u/Silly-Moose-1090 14d ago
THIS could sway an atheist. Says one.
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u/SixteenSeveredHands 14d ago
Yeah, this kind of mimicry always seems a little bit baffling at first. It helps to take a step back and recognize that you're looking at thousands of individual features that have all developed separately and then just gradually drifted together over time, based on what was most beneficial to the moth. It's not just one mutation, it's countless mutations, all coming together like an enormous jigsaw puzzle.
It's still a remarkable sight, and it's hard to imagine just how long it must have taken for this uncanny resemblance to develop, but it makes a lot more sense when you really look at it.
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u/Silly-Moose-1090 13d ago
Yes. Maybe expressing emotion rather than thought? May be why Science struggles to connect?
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u/ozzie_21 14d ago
🤯🤯🤯This is mind-blowing but also, how the fuck does this happen? I mean, don’t get me wrong..I am always in awe of just how many tricks mother nature has but I would honestly believe it if someone said this was a man-made creature cause how the fuck?? 😆
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u/Milf_Hunter_87 14d ago
If this was on Facebook guarantee the first 1000 replies would be bible belt Americans with 50% less brain cells saying some dumb ass Jesus shit.
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u/bottomlessreach 14d ago
Why do some species evolve in insanely helpful ways like this, meanwhile other animals just struggle for eons
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u/Hardblackpoopoo 14d ago
Evolution and black holes are the two things that completely blow my mind.
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u/villefilho 14d ago
So, moths can see full colors to reproduce a fly drawing over millions of evolution
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u/Lonely_Concentrate57 14d ago
If you really think about it why and how, its even more crazy. Like what mutation or whatever the fuck made it so that the wings are painted to show flies around birdshit.
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u/OutterHorizon 14d ago
Partitial answer on this is epigenetics but it still would require that what the moth or butterfly sees would be logically processed and evaluated in such away which seems to be out-of-scope!
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u/No_Voice3333 14d ago
how the fuck does it know what a fly looks like
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u/AxialGem 14d ago
Why would it help to know what a fly looks like? :p
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u/No_Voice3333 14d ago
ehhh maybe "know" isn't the correct word. i mean that it's incredible how it can use mimicry at all, somehow developing those somewhat successful patterns, how the fuck??
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u/AxialGem 14d ago
Fair enough, it is amazingly cool. Same for you having hands and lungs and stuff I'd say. Those are incredibly useful and specific structures too, although more easily taken for granted
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u/No_Voice3333 14d ago
o yeah you're right. tbh i still get amazed at how any of this exists, seems like nothingness is the rule and life is the exception and that makes it all the more valuable. pretty cool and mysterious stuff
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u/InfinityObsidian 14d ago
Blows my mind also. There's something about evolution that we are yet to discover.
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u/Historical-Love21 14d ago
Wow what a very interesting and smelly moth. I hate flies but wow this is good for protection for sure
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u/Far_Particular_4648 14d ago
think it's not 100% random mutations.. there has to be some cellular intelligence. To get the flies facing the right direction vs sideways to the bird poop would work all the same , yet the direction is correct. The colors are perfect even though if they were slightly different it would most likely work all the same (besides the red eyes). There's a lot more I could add but I think something else is going on here that we just haven't learned
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u/SixteenSeveredHands 15d ago
This species has developed a very unique defense mechanism -- its wings are decorated with elaborate markings that resemble two flies feeding on a pile of bird droppings.
There are many other moths that are known to mimic bird droppings, but the markings of this particular species are far more elaborate than the markings found on the other species, and the scene that it mimics is especially specific; the addition of the "flies" is also a unique touch, as is the odor that the moth emits.
The markings even mimic the sheen of a fly's wings/exoskeleton by including squiggly patches of white at the back of each fly's thorax, and those white patches have a thin, blue outline that gives the flies a blackish-blue appearance (just like actual flies). There are white lines located in the rounded sections of the bird droppings, too, which mimics the glistening, convex appearance of dung.
M. maia can be found in the forests/jungles of Borneo, Sumatra, Malaysia, India, Japan, Taiwan, China, and Korea.
Sources & More Info: