Nature Podcast2 Jul 2025

3D-printed fake wasps help explain bad animal mimicry

In this episode:

00:45 Why animals evolve to be imperfect mimics

Many harmless animals mimic dangerous ones to avoid being eaten, but often this fakery is inaccurate. To help explain why evolution sometimes favours imperfect mimicry, a team 3D printed a range of imaginary insects. The novel creatures were designed to mimic wasps with varying degrees of accuracy and the team then presented these models to different predators. They showed that while birds were hard to fool, invertebrate predators were less able to discern between the mimics and accurate wasp models. The results suggest that predator perception plays a key role in the level of accuracy needed to fool them and may help explain the existence of inaccurate mimics in nature.

Research article: Taylor et al.

News and Views: 3D printing offers a way to study mimicry by insects

12:53 Research Highlights

Ritual ‘retirement’ rather than family feud may explain broken statues of a female pharaoh, and how kelp ‘loofahs’ made by killer whales might be the first example of toolmaking by a marine mammal.

Research Highlight: The shattered statues of Queen Hatshepsut: the reasons for the wreckage

Research Highlight: Killer whales exfoliate each other with home-made scrubbers

15:02 Briefing Chat

The sea slugs that steal chloroplasts to snack on, and the researchers re-enacting a Stone Age sea-voyage.

Nature: ‘Wildest thing’: solar-powered slug steals chloroplasts and stores them for emergencies

Nature: These scientists re-enacted Stone Age voyage to Japan’s remote islands

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