Gaps in knowing?
It happens because over the course of thousands of years minute and wholly random genetic alterations make a difference to the physical appearance of the insect at various stages of its life. By chance, it vaguely resembles a snake at one point; this may give a slight survival advantage, thereby increasing the chance that the characteristic will survive for another generation.
HTH.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 21 May 2015, 9:29,
Reply)
I see you've been watching
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y1dRuJSH5I
Edit: here's another caterpillar new to science
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz4pxFJv50A
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Mudface The web isn't callipygian, Thu 21 May 2015, 9:35,
Reply)
Nonsense
God willed it.
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evil_andy Stick stick stick stick sticky sticky stick stick, Thu 21 May 2015, 9:52,
Reply)
You have a point
after all God applied such Batesian mimicry when creating mankind in the image of his wrathful gaseous orifice
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Mudface The web isn't callipygian, Thu 21 May 2015, 10:00,
Reply)
But that snake was not around in that area
Why they started to look like a specific snake without possible connections - the randomness of nature is more likely.
Don't think it was God messing with us, he would have made it more obvious...
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tubaman, Thu 21 May 2015, 10:07,
Reply)
Which is more or less what I said.
The fact that it looks like a specific snake is neither here nor there. All that matters is that it looks less attractive to a predator. If by chance it happens to look like something specific... well, so it goes.
I'm still not sure why you claimed there's a gap in our knowledge related to this specific example (except in the trivial sense).
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 21 May 2015, 10:22,
Reply)
