托福口语 Task 4

Today we're going to talk about a fascinating behavior in the animal kingdom called 'mimicry'—but not the kind you might think of, like a butterfly looking like a leaf. I'm focusing on 'behavioral mimicry,' where an animal copies the actions of another species to gain a survival advantage. Let me give you two examples. First, consider the 'mockingbird.' It imitates the songs of other birds, sometimes even the calls of predators like hawks. When a mockingbird sings a hawk's call, it can scare away other birds from a food source, leaving more insects for the mockingbird. So the mimicry helps it secure food. Second, there's a type of harmless snake called the 'kingsnake.' When threatened, it vibrates its tail rapidly among dry leaves, producing a sound very similar to a rattlesnake's rattle. Predators, having learned to avoid rattlesnakes, hear this sound and back off, giving the kingsnake a chance to escape. So in both cases, the animal uses imitation of another species' signals to deceive a third party—whether to get food or avoid being eaten.