Re: any Dino-skunks?

["Demetrios M. Vital" <vita0015@umn.edu>]

On 3 Jul 2001, Ken Kinman wrote:
>      But the point is that mimicry has little to do with skeletal
> differences that we use to identify, because the predator only sees the
> outside of the body.

I think that skeletal shape does have a large effect, though, and lifestyle
and habitat aren't to be overlooked.  It seems that all of those are too
different in ornithomimosaurs and therizinosaurs.  Milk snakes *look* like
coral snakes, except for that subtle color pattern difference, but their
bodies are the same to a predator.  I don't think the same can be said (as
easily) with therizinosaurs and ornithomimosaurs.

>      That is why mimicry is a rather common occurrence.   A large number
of
> spiders (in a variety of different families) are ant-mimics.  Not only
the
> body shape, but they often run around in the jerky manner that many ants
do.
>   Of course, the reason this works is that many spider predators don't
like
> the taste of ants.

Also, the spiders are trying to confuse the ants that they prey on to allow
the predating spiders to get in close, to attack the ants.

>       Biologists can fairly easily tell a monarch from a viceroy
butterfly,
> and even a therizinosaur from an ornithomime, but if viceroys can fool
> modern birds into thinking they are monarchs, then I think therizinosaurs
or
> ornithomimes could also have developed mimicry that would have fooled
their
> predators, at least part of the time.

Viceroys have been found to share similar taste defences as monarchs.  This
means that they aren't outright mimicking monarchs, rather they are
possibly exhibiting those traits as a result of parallel evolution boecause
both animals are poisonous in similar ways.  So, recently, the butterflies
were found to not be a case of mimicry.

As far as skunks in the dino world.  I don't know about birds, but there
are many reptiles with terrible scents.  The other night I caught a common
garter snake outside of a friend's house, and boy did it stink.  That musk
is effective (I wasn't going to eat the snake, but I wouldn't have after
the musk, either way!), and I wouldn't put it past a dinosaur to have a
similar adaptation.

But, as HP Martyniuk pointed out, this isn't a skeletal adaptation.

-Demetrios Vital