You know, in general it’s called mimicry. But how does it work even though all these creatures only perceive their surroundings with the eyes and so on. Like…just how it knows the way these creatures should be changed to be less visible.
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Let’s take a deer as an example.
One day, long ago there was a four legged creature. It looked much like a deer, but shorter and chunkier and had no antlers.
We’ll call it a Deern’t.
These creatures weren’t so good at fighting, so predators ate them in droves.
Further, they weren’t so good at running either.
This lead to fierce competitions for mates, headbutting and attacking each other.
One day, a really wierd deern’t is born. It has these wierd mutations that cause some of the hairs on its head to grow super wide. I mean really wide. Like what the heck is this big patch of keratin, ew.
Well, those wierd dumb gross keratin mutations make headbutting way safer. They also grow long and sharp and pointy which makes them great weapons. This Deern’t becomes a god among its kind, staving off every hornless deern’t and spreading it’s mangled but beneficial genes through the population.
We’ll call this step, The Derr.
The Derr begin to throve, but they are still very bad at running away.
Well, one day some Derr is born with just… FREAKISHLY long legs i mean what the EFF are those STILTS attached to you?
But it turns out, those longer legs mean it only has to run faster than the other Derr. As the slower Derr die off, the long legged, faster Derr gets to mate and spread its genes, making many long legged derr.
Eventually, with tons of these random small changes happening via natural selection, we get things that just work. “Designed” by billions of years of trial, error, loss of what doesn’t work, and survival of what works.
So in the terms of a stick bug… One day a bug with a longer body was born. It died less often. The longer bugs that moved in specific ways died less than the shorter bugs. Eventually stick bug.
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