Deadly animals

https://youtu.be/fbm8Anz2oYc
Top 20 Most Dangerous Animals in the World(19:22min)
 Most edible animals are
cryptic (or
camouflaged)

But some are

brightly coloured
and obvious
 Cryptic animals and
plants are protected from
predators because they
are hard to find

But brightly coloured

animals are easy to spot,
so they are in danger from
predators who can easily
find and eat them
Brightly coloured animals are often poisonous
(contain a toxin) for protection

A blue jay eats a and is sick as a result

monarch butterfly
They may get the toxins from their food
This is called sequestering toxins

Here is a caterpillar
of the monarch
butterfly
sequestering a
heart poison from
the milkweed plant
 Here is a sea slug which
collects poison from the
jellyfish it eats, making it
toxic to fish who would
otherwise eat it

This snake collects

poisons from a toxic toad
which it eats. It stores the
toxins in the yellow area on
its neck
If they don‟t eat anything poisonous, animals have to make their
own poison by special chemical processes in their body, this is
called chemical synthesis

Wasps
synthesise
the poison
in their
sting

And dart poison frogs synthesise a

toxin so poisonous that one lick of
their skin would kill you!
But most toxins are
This often kills it,
inside the animal so how do these
Why might that be a species evolve?
problem?
(Think before you click!)
This butterfly has had its
wings bitten by a bird!
To avoid this problem, a toxic animal can spray
the toxin at its predator

Skunks do this

So do ants

And bombardier beetles fire

boiling acid at their enemies!
 Some brightly coloured animals use a
different tactic. They signal to the
predators that they are toxic

These animals which are

both brightly coloured and
contain a toxin, are called
aposematic animals

Another name for this is

warning coloration
Aposematic animals use colours like: red and yellow
with black stripes or spots to signal their toxicity

We use the same colours to signal danger

Their bright, recognisable patterns let the predators learn
quickly and easily that animals with those colours are nasty to
eat

Their signals have evolved to make it easy

for the predator to learn

But what makes a signal easy to learn?

Learning is helped by Think about how you would
the signal being: teach a dog to sit

- Conspicuous You use simple, fairly loud, clear commands

- Unusual Use a word the dog doesn’t know
- Repeated You reward him each time he sits
- Truthful You reward him if does sit
- Consistent You always reward him, every time
- Quickly followed by the You reward him as soon as he sits
punishment or reward

- Confirmed by other signals You may use a hand signal at the same time
you say “sit”

Each of the factors in the left hand list are being used by the method on the right
But aposematic animals don‟t limit their signals
to colour; they also signal to the predators with
smells, tastes, and sounds

Ladybirds produce
blood from their joints

This „reflex blood‟ tastes very bitter, and has a weird

smell called pyrazine
 Bees buzz a characteristic
warning sound

Some
cockroaches
hiss in warning

Rattlesnakes rattle
their tails

Can you think of any other warning sounds, smells or tastes?

Does it really help the predator
learn if the prey gives several
types of signal at once?
Wouldn‟t it just confuse the
predator?

Meet
Emma Siddall,
who has been
doing
experiments to
find out
 Emma used chicks as a predator, and the prey
„insects‟ were crumbs of coloured chick food

The chick food was

dyed yellow or green,
and the yellow crumbs
made nasty with a
bitter chemical called
„bitrex‟

She wanted to test whether the chicks could learn to avoid the
yellow crumbs and only eat the green ones
The single green or yellow crumbs were offered to the chicks in holes round
the edge of a tray. A second signal, a smell, could be put beneath each
yellow crumb in a special chamber below each hole

She used pyrazine as the odour,

which is what ladybirds smell of
So the chicks were given two signals: yellow colour, and a warning
smell. They walked around the tray choosing what to eat
Did having two signals help the chicks learn to
avoid the yellow crumbs?

Here you can see the number of crumbs

eaten in each trial. The chicks all ate a
lot of yellow crumbs in the first trial, but
those chicks that experienced the
pyrazine odour learned quickly to avoid
the yellow crumbs. Those with only one
signal, the yellow colour, learned more
slowly and ate more yellow crumbs in all.

So an insect with two cues, odour and colour, will probably be

better at teaching the birds to avoid it than an insect which
has only one part to its signal, colour alone
So Emma’s experiments show that at least one
aspect of aposematic signals has evolved to aid
learning

What about the other factors which aid learning?

Do aposematic animals show them too?

In each of the following slides you need to decide

which of the factors which aid learning are
definitely being used by the aposematic animal
pictured. If you don‟t know enough about the animal
(maybe no-one does) then don‟t count that factor for
that animal
Factors which aid learning -
The signal is:
- Conspicuous
- Unusual
- Repeated
- Truthful
- Consistent
- Quickly followed by the
punishment or reward.
- Confirmed by other signals
Factors which aid learning
The signal is :
- Conspicuous
- Unusual
- Repeated
- Truthful
- Consistent
- Quickly followed by the
punishment or reward. These are toxic striped ladybirds
which smell of pyrazine and taste
- Confirmed by other signals horrible. They often aggregate
together like this
Factors which aid learning -
The signal is :
- Conspicuous
- Unusual
- Repeated
- Truthful
- Consistent
- Quickly followed by the Each spine on this lionfish can give you
punishment or reward a very painful sting!

- Confirmed by other signals

Factors which aid learning -
The signal is :
- Conspicuous “If red
- Unusual touches
yellow, it This is a very venomous coral
- Repeated snake. A bite would kill a man within
can kill a hours
- Truthful fellow”
- Consistent
- Quickly followed by the
punishment or reward
- Confirmed by other signals
This is a milk snake. It is totally
harmless, but copies the signal of
the coral snake, giving a visual
signal which is a lie!
So cheats on the signalling
system exist. They are called
Batesian mimics, and they
make the signal harder to learn

Here are some other Batesian mimics

to finish with, all of which are
harmless, but look just like a toxic
species. See if you can think of any
more!
The top
frog is
harmless,
the bottom
two
species
are deadly!
1.Elephants can jump 10 centimetres. False. Elephants cannot jump.
2.A mouse‟s teeth never stop growing. True
3.Some crickets have ears on their knees. True.
4.There are less than 1000 kinds of bats. False. There are over 1100.
5.Grizzly bears in North America eat fruit. True
6.Polar bears have white skin. False. Polar bears have black skin.
7.Cows can sleep standing up. True.
8.Bulls hate the color red. False. Bulls and cows are color blind.
9.Australian wombats have square poop. True.
10.A cat cannot taste sugar. True
11.Puppies are born without teeth. TrueFlamingos are born pink.
False. They are born white, their diet turns them pink.
12. Crocodiles cry when they eat. True.
13. Dogs have 2 eyelids. False. Dogs have 3 eyelids.
14. A barn owl eats around 1000 rats and mice each year. True.
15. An octopus has 2 hearts. False. They have 3 hearts.
16. Penguins cannot hear well. False. They have good hearing.
17. An emperor penguin can dive up to 500 metres underwater.
True
18. Goats have square pupils in their eyes. True
19. Camels keep water in their humps. False. They store fat in
their humps.
20. A swan can break your arm. True. They have broken people‟s
arms and legs.
21. Sea otters hold hands when they sleep. True. They do this so
that they don‟t drift apart in the ocean.