Butterflies use optical illusions to dodge predators

(essex.ac.uk)

48 points | by gmays 10 hours ago

7 comments

  • lopis 3 hours ago
    I don't understand articles that are completely about a piece of media, but don't show or link to any piece of said media. This article cannot be effective without a video.
    • Utilera 2 hours ago
      Even a 10-second slow-motion clip would probably explain the result better than half the article
  • scun 8 hours ago
    Sounds like the ol' razzle dazzle

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage

  • yathern 9 hours ago
    > The team combined multiple lines of evidence. They used a high-speed camera to film real butterflies taking off at over 1,000 frames per second to capture how their patterns behave in flight, as seen through the eyes of a bird.

    > To test how patterns affected real attacks, 100 volunteers acted as “predators”, trying to catch virtual butterflies on a touchscreen.

    This sounds fascinating, and I'd love to see footage demonstrating the barber-pole effect. If that's not available, I'd alternatively love to see footage of volunteers trying to tap butterflies on an iPad.

    • Utilera 2 hours ago
      The description is interesting enough that it almost feels incomplete without the video
  • Utilera 2 hours ago
    What I like about this is that the camouflage isn't really in the pattern itself, but in the interaction between the pattern, the wing deformation, and the predator's visual system.
  • isolay 3 hours ago
    Well, what the kids don’t learn in biology class, they can still learn on HN.
  • esalman 5 hours ago
    This weekend while cleaning dry leaves in our backyard we discovered a large moth. We all mistook it fot another dry leaf until it started fluttering. Fabulous stuff.
  • anthk 9 hours ago
    This is Micheal Levin-level mind blowing. His theory can be shortened to "there's intelligence in really small discrete parts of Biological entities".
    • suddenlybananas 44 minutes ago
      How is that different from just saying "evolutionary adaptive changes can seem clever".