Automimicry

In another form, first noted by Edward B. Poulton in 1890, a less vulnerable part of an animal's body resembles a more vulnerable part, for example with deceptive eyespots or a false head that deflects attacks away from the real head, providing an immediate selective advantage.

Automimicry was first reported by the ecologist Lincoln Brower and colleagues, who found that monarch butterflies reared on cabbage were palatable to blue jays.

For the first question, as long as prey of the species are, on average, unprofitable for predators to attack, automimicry can persist.

If predators carefully sample their prey and spit out any that taste bad before doing significant damage ("go-slow" behaviour), then honest signallers would have an advantage over automimics that cheat.

Studies of rear-wing damage support the hypothesis that this strategy is effective in deflecting attacks from the insect's head.

Naturalists[a] since Edward B. Poulton in his 1890 book The Colours of Animals[15] have noted that butterflies with eyespots or other false head markings can be expected to escape with minor wing damage while the predator gets only "a mouthful of hindwing" instead of an insect meal.

[12] In Poulton's words: Each hind wing in these [hairstreak] butterflies is furnished with a 'tail', which in certain species is long, thin, and apparently knobbed at the end.

The effect of the marking and movement is to produce the deceptive appearance of a head at the wrong end of the body.

[17] Several species of pygmy owl bear false eyes (ocelli) on the back of the head, misleading predators into reacting as though they were the subject of an aggressive stare.

[19] The ground attack A-10 Thunderbolt (Warthog) was sometimes painted with a camouflage scheme that included both disruptive coloration and automimicry in the form of a false canopy on the underside.