Even more s…t today!

Well, it’s been a while I didn’t update my website but you know, I was busy with shit… yes, well, shit-like animals I must admit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a perv, but it’s just that into nature there’s more than one species that look like other animal’s poop (scientists call it “fecal mimicry”)!

So, after my encounter with the magnificent (please, follow me on this) bird-dropping spider (Phrynarachne decipiens), I started to look around and yes, there are more species which thought that resembling a dung could be a great way to deal with life, at least evolutionally speaking.
So I managed to find even some in captivity, from various labs, like some caterpillars belonging to the genus Papilio (yes, the adult butterflies are gorgeous, and I mean really gorgeous) or some frogs like the South American milk frog (Trachycephalus resinifictrix) or the Asiatic bird poop frog (Theloderma asperum).

The so called fecal mimicry is even more widespread than previously thought and there are even some South African plants that have seeds with the same shape and smell of a antelope dung, so they can be carried away and dispersed by dung beetles (not fair game, but hey, it’s survival we’re talking about). If you want to read more about these plants, you can find the original paper here: http://www.nature.com/articles/nplants2015141

Quite recently I found papers about some more species that resemble animal’s poop, so I’ll keep you informed if I find them!