PROTECTIVE RESEMBLANCES, AND MIMICRY 913 
cussed the advantage to the animal lies in the resemblance 
between the animals and their surroundings, in the incon- 
spicuousness and concealment afforded by the coloration. 
But there is another interesting phase of advantageous 
coloration in which the advantage derived is in render- 
ing the animals as conspicuous and as readily recogniz- 
able as possible. While many animals are very inconspicu- 
ously colored, or are manifestly colored so as to resemble 
their surroundings, generally or specifically, many other 
animals are very brightly and conspicuously colored and 
patterned. If we are struck by the numerous cases of imi- 
tative coloring among insects, we must be no less impressed 
by the many cases of bizarre and conspicuous coloration 
among them. 
Many animals, as we well know, possess special and 
effective weapons of defense, as the poison-fangs of the 
venomous snakes and the stings of bees and wasps. Other 
animals, and with these cases most of us are not so well 
acquainted, possess a means of defense, or rather safety, in 
being inedible—that is, in possessing some acrid or ill- 
tasting substance in the body which renders them unpala- 
table to predaceons animals. Many caterpillars have been 
found, by observation in Nature and by experiment, to be 
distasteful to insectivorous birds. Now, it is obvious that 
it would be a great advantage to these caterpillars if they 
could be readily recognized by birds, for a severe stroke by 
a bird’s bill is about as fatal to a caterpillar as being wholly 
eaten. Its soft, distended body suffers mortal hurt if cut 
or bitten by the bird’s beak. This advantage of being 
readily recognizable is possessed by many if not all ill- 
tasting caterpillars by being brilliantly and conspicuously 
colored and marked. Such colors and markings are called 
warning colors. They are intended to inform birds of the 
fact that the caterpillar displaying them is an ill-tasting 
insect, a caterpillar to be let alone. The conspicuously 
black-and-yellow banded larva (Fig. 43, 6) of the common 
15 
