“It might be a good rule of thumb for animals to avoid eating brightly coloured animals, since something that doesn’t need to adopt camouflage has clearly survived through some strategy other than concealment, and hence it might be best avoided. Here again, we have a case where **doing something ostensibly irrational conveys more meaning than something that makes sense**. It has meaning precisely because it is difficult to do. It is not impossible to fake, but it is risky to do so – being highly visible but not poisonous is a mimicry strategy adopted by certain non-venomous snakes, for instance. What makes it risky is that, if any predator learns to tell you apart from the dangerous species you are imitating, he stands to make a killing – at your expense.” --- **Tags** -- [[templates]], [[quotes]], [[signalling]] , [[mimetic-theory]], ****Source** -- [[202407221554 - B - Alchemy]]** --