Take caterpillars for example: if a bird eats a fatally poisonous caterpillar and dies immediately, it learned nothing, the caterpillar gained nothing for being poisonous, and that caterpillar species will continue to be preyed upon.
But if a caterpillar is only mildly toxic, and a bird eats it, the bird may survive and learn to avoid things that look like it, and that caterpillar species as a whole benefits as the cycle continues.
Am I missing something obvious? Wouldn’t it make more sense for mild toxicity to prevail as the more advantageous trait, over time?
edit: another point of confusion — more toxic animals tend to advertise their unsavoriness with bright colors. We generally accept that predators know to avoid brightly colored prey, but if they die during their very first encounter with one, how is that info passed along to other predators?
In: Biology
> if they die during their very first encounter with one, how is that info passed along to other predators?
The predators are evolving too. Some birds like green caterpillars and some like red ones. The green ones taste bad, the red ones are lethally toxic.
When the bird population goes eating caterpillars most of the birds that prefer the red caterpillars simply die and don’t reproduce. The next generation of birds trends towards not liking red caterpillars.
No information is conveyed, the population just gets sorted by natural selection. As the caterpillars evolved toxicity their predators were evolving at the same time, acquiring an aversion to the toxic prey… or even a resistance. By the time another predator enters the environment a red caterpillar that gives their adapted bird a tummy ache will instead kill the new predator right away.
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