Mimicry in the Ocean

Mimicry is a strategy of animals to look like a much more dangerous, but in fact very different animal. The mimic, who is usually harmless, then profits from potential predators mistaking it for the dangerous model, and leaving it alone. This clever trick has evolved convergently in many groups of animals. Today I’d like to show you an example from the ocean which I filmed myself:

In the video below I show a sea snake, the model, and a snake eel, the mimicry. The sea snakes are very venomous, their bites can kill, even though they very rarely bite humans. Interestingly, a few marine snake species show this brown/black and white banding, hence the banded snake eel mimics several dangerous model species at once:

This second video also shows a banded snake eel in action. You can see how snake-like it moves. The mimic often extends not only to shape and coloration, but also to behavior:

I hope you enjoyed the two videos,

Best Fishes,

Klaus