Camouflaged Animals

Carroll, Sean B. "Imitators That Hide in Plain Sight, and Stay Alive ". The New York Times February 15 2010

In this article, Sean B. Carroll describes the theories of Henry Walter Bates based on the 14,000 species he study in the Amazon jungle. Bates traveled to South America with Alfred Russell Wallace, but the two didn't see eye to eye, so he ventured off on his own. Practically giving up on his research because of money issues, Bates got yellow fever the week he was supposed to leave Brazil, received a new grant, and spent another eight years there. His research studied "the close resemblance of some animals to living or inanimate objects" and concluded that "defenseless mimics gained an advantage by resembling well-defended species." He tried to find out if it was through evolution that this occurred. Charles Darwin was "excited" that Bates' findings supported his own theories of artificial and natural selection.
It is incredible to see how scientists like Bates, Darwin, and Wallace researched and how similar their work is, supporting the evolution theories of the other scientists within years of each other. Which is interesting that Bates worked with Wallace and Darwin, because Wallace and Darwin both came out with papers at the same time. I think the combination of working with both of them gave him more ideas of how to research and do experiments. If Bates hadn't gotten yellow fever, would he have discovered what he did or would someone else discover it later? I think his theory about the animals makes a lot of sense, because we as animals have to adapt to our surroundings if we want to survive. Even humans use camouflage when they are hunting and trying not to be seen by their prey, so it would make sense for animals to try and hid from their attackers.