CHAPTER XII 
PROTECTIVE RESEMBLANCES, AND MIMICRY 
10%. Protective resemblance defined.—If a grasshopper 
be startled from the ground, you may watch it and deter- 
mine exactly where it alights after its leap or flight, and 
yet, on going to the spot, be wholly unable to find it. The 
colors and marking of the insect so harmonize with its sur- 
roundings of soil and vegetation that it is nearly indistin- 
guishable as long as it remains at rest. And if you were 
intent on capturing grasshoppers for fish-bait, this resem- 
blance in appearance to their surroundings would be very 
annoying to you, while it would be a great advantage to 
the grasshoppers, protecting some of them from capture and 
death. This is protective resemblance. Mere casual obser- 
vation reveals tous that such instances of protective resem- 
blance are very common among animals. A rabbit or grouse 
crouching close to the ground and remaining motionless 
is almost indistinguishable. Green caterpillars lying out- 
stretched along green grass-blades or on green leaves may 
be touched before being recognized by sight. In arctic 
regions of perpetual snow the polar bears, the snowy arctic 
foxes, and the hares are all pure white instead of brown 
and red and gray like their cousins of temperate and warm 
regions. Animals of the desert are almost without excep- 
tion obscurely mottled with gray and sand color, so as to 
harmonize with their surroundings. 
In the struggle for existence anything that may give 
an animal an advantage, however slight, may be sufficient 
to turn the scale in favor of the organism possessing the 
201 
