The viceroy butterfly was long filed as a harmless copy of the monarch, until later work showed both are unpalatable — Müllerian mimicry, not Batesian. The further an animal drifts from the background colour, the more often it is caught each time a predator eye sweeps past: selection pressure turned into a number. Disruptive coloration abandons blending altogether and uses high-contrast stripes to break the body outline, while colour-changing species let chromatophores track a shifting background in real time.
The viceroy butterfly was long filed as a harmless copy of the monarch, until later work showed both are unpalatable — Müllerian mimicry, not Batesian. The further an animal drifts from the background colour, the more often it is caught each time a predator eye sweeps past: selection pressure turned into a number. Disruptive coloration abandons blending altogether and uses high-contrast stripes to break the body outline, while colour-changing species let chromatophores track a shifting background in real time.
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