Gao Qiqiang is not the only one who can use the "Art of War"

Since the broadcast of "Kuang Bi", "learning military tactics" has become a topic of concern for many people, and "the same military tactics as Gao Qiqiang" are being sold everywhere. However, in nature, driven by cruel competition and evolution, many insects have already used various military tactics, and have played various "strategies" such as deceiving the enemy, creating something out of nothing, and waiting for the enemy to tire themselves out.

However, for a very long time, insects just used these strategies silently, unknown to humans. Humans turned a blind eye to these outstanding military practices and were completely unaware of their existence - otherwise, Gao Qiqiang would have been reading "Insect Art of War" in the series.

This situation did not change until the 19th century. We have to start with a British "bug expert" Henry Bates .

In 1848, Bates and Alfred Wallace boarded a ship to South America. At that time, they did not know that they would become famous figures in the history of science in the future.

Henry Bates, Image source: Wikipedia

Bates was born in Leicester, England on February 8, 1825. He loved insects since he was a child. He spent his spare time in the library to learn about entomology. He had published papers at the age of 18. At first, Bates only collected insects from the UK, but the local species were too limited. If he really wanted to study insects, he should go to the tropical areas of South America, which are rich in biodiversity. In 1848, he set out from Liverpool with Wallace and finally arrived in Pará, South America after two months of sailing. He stayed there for 11 years.

For Bates, who loves butterflies, going from Britain to Brazil is like a mouse falling into a rice jar. In his scientific travelogue "A Naturalist on the Amazon River", we can see the following figures: at that time, there were only 66 species of butterflies in the British Isles, and 321 species in Europe, while in Para, more than 700 species of butterflies can be found in an hour's walk . The butterflies in Para are not only diverse in species, but also in colors and patterns. You can see all kinds of colorful swallowtail butterflies on the street, and in the forest, you can also see the colorful Morpho butterflies and the gorgeous and dazzling Vanessa butterflies.

When observing these butterflies, Bates found that the slowest flying ones were often those with the brightest colors. It stands to reason that butterflies with eye-catching colors are easy to be spotted by predators. If these butterflies fly slowly and are not afraid of predators, it means that they are poisonous or unpalatable. Bates also found that most of these butterflies are common butterflies of the same type, they are butterflies of the Nymphalidae family, the Nymphalidae family, and the Gnaphalidae family. Mixed in with them are very few butterflies of the genus Pieridae of the family Pieridae, which are similar in color and shape to the "big group". Bates speculated that these butterflies are not poisonous themselves, and they protect themselves by imitating poisonous butterflies?

Facts have proved his conjecture. The larvae of the butterflies of the family Aglaonema mostly feed on poisonous plants of the Passiflora family, and the butterflies of the family Aglaonema prefer to eat poisonous plants of the Solanaceae family . They all accumulate toxins in this way as their own chemical weapons and retain the toxicity until the adult stage. Their larvae and adults have bright body colors to warn predators "don't eat me". Today, we already know that this defense method is called "warning color" , that is, poisonous or "not easy to mess with" animals use warning colors to "warn" natural enemies. The larvae of the sleeve white butterfly eat legumes and are non-toxic themselves. They avoid natural enemies by imitating the appearance of poisonous butterflies. Bates named this phenomenon "mimicry".

Batesian mimicry of South American butterflies. The left vertical columns 1-4 and the middle column 1 are all non-toxic butterflies of the genus Pieris; the right vertical columns 1-2 are poisonous butterflies of the family Nymphalidae; the right vertical columns 3-4 are poisonous butterflies of the family Nymphalidae. Image source: Wikipedia

In biology, the phenomenon that an organism obtains benefits by deceiving its natural enemies by imitating another organism or non-organism is called mimicry. Mimicry must meet three elements: the mimicker , the object of imitation , and the deceived . Only when it is proven that the mimicker successfully deceives the deceived by imitating the object of imitation can it be proved that this is a mimicry phenomenon. There are many different classifications of mimicry. The behavior of the non-toxic and edible butterflies discovered by Bates to deceive natural enemies and obtain protection by imitating poisonous and inedible butterflies is called Batesian mimicry . Simply put, Batesian mimicry is a phenomenon in which a not-so-"powerful" species confuses predators by imitating another "powerful" species . Translated into the art of war, it is probably a strategy such as creating something out of nothing and deceiving the world.

Batesian mimicry is very common in the biological world. There is a famous case in North America where the non-toxic black-striped butterfly deceives predators by mimicking the poisonous monarch butterfly. In addition, more than 2,000 invertebrates protect themselves by imitating the "little tyrant" of the insect world - ants. These are all Batesian mimicry.

The poisonous monarch butterfly (left) and the non-toxic black-striped butterfly (right), pictures provided by the author Sandieji

The spider that mimics ants - the ant spider, picture provided by the author Sandieji

The discovery of Batesian mimicry helped Darwin a lot. In 1859, Darwin published "The Origin of Species", which proposed the theory of natural selection that natural selection drives biological evolution. In the same year, Wallace also published a manuscript with similar conclusions. It caused an uproar in society at that time.

At that time, people believed in the theory of "scala naturae", also known as the "chain of being". It was first proposed by Aristotle and later adapted by creationists. The theory holds that the creatures in the world are connected by a chain of life, divided into different levels, the lowest being inanimate matter such as rocks, followed by plants, lower animals, higher animals, humans, angels above, and God at the top, who created everything below him. Each link in the chain cannot be moved at will, and all species remain unchanged.

Although Darwin provided a lot of evidence in "The Origin of Species" to prove that species are not static, but will undergo long-term and slow changes as the environment changes, it was still questioned by many people. Entomologist Wollaston claimed that butterflies were created by God and that the existence of butterflies proved the error of Darwin's theory.

Bates was a fan of Darwin and a staunch supporter of the theory of evolution. In 1861, Bates wrote a letter to Darwin, telling him that he had evidence to prove his theory of natural selection: some non-toxic butterflies could quickly change their colors in just a few generations based on the situation of other butterflies around them, using mimicry to imitate poisonous butterflies to avoid natural enemies.

Darwin was very excited when he received Bates' letter. He had never expected that the change and evolution of species could happen so quickly. He encouraged Bates to write a paper on his research results. Later, Bates' paper was published in the Journal of the Linnean Society in 1861. Darwin personally wrote a review for it. With the recommendation of industry experts, the article naturally attracted attention. This paper not only refuted the doubts of Wollaston and others, but also marked the birth of the theory of mimicry.

By the way, Bates also found that poisonous butterflies were very similar in appearance , but he did not think deeply about it or explain it. This omission was filled by Fritz Muller, a German entomologist who also conducted butterfly research in South America. Muller proposed that poisonous butterflies would also imitate each other, as if they "shared" the same color and appearance, making natural enemies afraid to eat them . This theory was later called "Müllerian mimicry", which refers to "powerful" creatures avoiding being eaten by imitating each other. This is more or less a bit of the meaning of waiting for the enemy to tire themselves out in the art of war.

Mimicry of different species of butterflies, Image source: Wikipedia

During his 11 years in South America, Bates collected nearly 15,000 specimens, 8,000 of which were new species. Most of the specimens are now collected in the Natural History Museum in London. After returning to the United States, Bates served as assistant secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, and was later appointed president of the Royal Entomological Society, and a researcher of the Linnean Society and the Royal Society of Science. The Batesian theory of mimicry he left behind is still widely studied in various fields today.

Author: Sandieji is a member of the Chinese Science Writers Association, a member of the expert report group of the Chinese Society for Scientific Exploration, and a specially-appointed expert of Science Popularization China.

Reviewer: Shi Wangpeng, Professor of Entomology Department, China Agricultural University