Hummingbird Chicks in Panama Master Caterpillar Mimicry to Survive

Quick Smiles:

• Hummingbird chicks in Panama have been observed mimicking caterpillars to avoid predators.
• This behavior was discovered in the white-necked Jacobin hummingbird for the first time.
• The chick’s mimicry involves twitching and shaking its head, resembling a toxic caterpillar.

In the lush rainforest of Panama, a fascinating discovery has been made by bird biologists. They observed a white-necked Jacobin hummingbird chick engaging in a highly unusual behavior.

The chick, smaller than a pinky finger, was covered in brown fuzz and began twitching and shaking its head when researchers approached its nest.

This peculiar behavior, as described in a recent study, appears to be a survival strategy. The chick mimics a poisonous caterpillar native to the same region, potentially deterring predators.

“We know so little about what nesting birds do in the tropics,” said one of the researchers involved in the study. “But if we put more effort into observing the natural world, we might discover these kinds of behavior are very common.”

The dense rainforest is fraught with danger for small birds, with predators like snakes, monkeys, and even insects lurking.

The research team stumbled upon this mimicry behavior during a visit to Soberanía National Park.

Despite frequent visits from adult hummingbirds to feeders, the researchers had never seen a white-necked Jacobin chick or its nest before.

Last March, the team discovered a female incubating an egg in a well-camouflaged nest made of plant material.

Upon hatching, the chick was covered in long brown feathers that blended seamlessly with the nest.

The team was astonished to witness the chick’s jerking behavior, which was previously undocumented in any hummingbird species.

“I started texting a video to people and asking them, ‘What does this look like?’” one of the researchers shared. “And invariably, they said, ‘That looks like a caterpillar.’ It was very exciting.”

The chick’s mimicry was put to the test when a predatory wasp approached the nest. As the wasp hovered, the chick twitched its body and swung its head, causing the wasp to retreat.

This behavior reminded the researchers of a young cinereous mourner from the Amazonian rainforest, which mimics toxic orange caterpillars by having a bright orange coat and waving its head when disturbed.

In Panama, many caterpillars have brown hairs that can sting predators, and some even shake their heads when threatened. This survival strategy, known as Batesian mimicry, involves a harmless species imitating a harmful one.

“A lot of these really classic examples of Batesian mimicry involve butterflies mimicking other butterflies, or snakes mimicking other snakes,” a researcher explained. “But here, we have a bird potentially mimicking an insect, a vertebrate mimicking an invertebrate.”

Though this study was based on a single observation, the researchers plan to test their theory further. They hope to conduct experiments with artificial chicks and encourage birdwatchers to document more hummingbird nests.

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