托福口语 Task 4

Today, we're going to talk about a fascinating concept in biology called 'mimicry.' Specifically, I want to focus on how certain harmless species have evolved to imitate dangerous ones for survival. This is known as Batesian mimicry. The main point here is that by resembling a harmful species, a harmless species can deceive predators into avoiding it. Let me give you two examples to illustrate this. First, consider the scarlet king snake. It has bright red, yellow, and black bands, very similar to the venomous coral snake. Predators learn to avoid the coral snake after a bad experience, and they mistake the king snake for it, leaving it alone. Second, there's the hoverfly. It looks like a bee, with similar yellow and black stripes. Birds avoid hoverflies because they think they might get stung, even though hoverflies are completely harmless. So, in both cases, the harmless species gains protection by mimicking a dangerous one, which clearly demonstrates the adaptive advantage of Batesian mimicry.