This piece, from nerdist. com, describes one of the more amazing cases of mimicry I’ve seen. Look at the picture below, and see what you think it is:
It’s not a snake, despite the very snake-y appearance of the thing. It has eyes (fake), the eyes even have a “glint” in them (fake), it has a fake mouth, and even fake “scales”.
It’s from Trinidad, and it’s one of the life stages of a lepidopteran. In fact, it’s the pupal case of the Daring-Owl butterfly Dynastor darius darius, a subspecies from Trinidad (the species D. darius is found in Central and South America).
Here’s a picture of an adult of another subspecies,D. darius stygianus:
And the caterpillar of D. darius darius, which is weird looking but not nearly as weird as the pupa:
It’s when this caterpillar becomes a pupa that it turns into a snake…
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