This post is the fifth in a six post series outlining the evolution of mimicry within the ocean realm. These posts detail various ways in which organisms may copy other organisms in appearance and behavior, and the evolutionary context for how these mimic-model pairings have come to be. The first entry in this series goes over some fundamental introductory concepts and definitions regarding mimicry in general.

Animals can be real dicks.

Hermit crabs congregate solely to aggressively covet bigger and better shells, eventually leaving at least one or two crabs forcefully foreclosed upon and left to wander the beach, squishy, defenseless, and homeless. Lovable dolphins routinely slaughter porpoises that stray too close to their turf, but not without sexually assaulting and mutilating them first…you know, just because. Male mallard ducks are such a charming combination of unhinged sexual aggressiveness and zero regard for consent that females of the species have evolved vaginal labyrinths to stymie the effectiveness of the penetration of the corkscrew Johnsons of their feathered assailants. The natural world is chock-full of organisms being outright bastards to one another, because life is rough, and sometimes those that are more Shkreli than Gandhi scam and abuse their way to evolutionary success. In the river of Life, the fork that yields survivorship, high fecundity, and a strong genetic legacy is typically navigated by a very special variety of watercraft: the douche-canoe.
The phenomenon of mimicry is certainly not immune from nefarious applications, and many taxa use mimicry to gain the trust of other species, only to con them…potentially out of their lives. This flavor of mimicry, where an organism mimics a species perceived by others as benign (or even beneficial) to gain access to resources (food, mating opportunities, etc.), is called “aggressive mimicry.” I’ve brought it up briefly before in this post series, in particular when talking about fish that use lures to persuade prey to practically swim into their waiting gobs, like with the decoy scorpionfish or the frogfish. However, there are some marine critters that take the cake when it comes to the Machiavellian style of mimicry. The fish that this blog post will explore shamelessly engage in as much sociopathy, brazen laziness, selfishness, and manipulative scheming as you’ll find this side of an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

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