#aposematism

[scottpartridge]

Honeybee - Prompt 14 of #aprilcolors2025 from @faunwood is #warningcoloration

"Aposematism" comes from Greek words suggesting the meaning "go away sign". Kind of like a No Trespassing sign now that I think of it.

[cellulosaurus]

Dinovember day 19 & 20: Phorusrhacos and Yi + aposematism

(Couldn't finish the terror in time...)

Yeah, birbs. Phorusrhacos longissimus' beak is mostly just a sea eagle's, and Yi qi's wings are vaguely inspired by flying dragon's.

@1dinodaily

[bpod-bpod]

True Colours

Sea slugs or nudibranchs are often called the butterflies of the sea. Like butterflies, their striking colours result from are a combination of pigment-based chemicals, and structural colour – where light is separated into colours as it bends around tiny contours on their bodies. Stacks of tiny refractive crystals, a bit like pixels on a screen, allow this Chromodoris annae nudibranch to produce a bright silvery blue colour. But the vibrant hues are a warning – or aposematism – to the sea slug’s deadly trick. Nudibranchs are chemical thieves – wonderfully named 'kleptochemists' – reusing and modifying chemicals ripped from their prey for their own defences. In other research, human chemists find that some of these bioactive chemicals are toxic to cancer cells, suggesting nudibranchs could be living factories for future life-saving drugs.

Written by John Ankers

Video from work by Samuel Humphrey and colleagues; Cancer drug research by Servillera & Peña et al, in Marine Drugs, Aug 2025

Department of Sustainable and Bio-inspired Materials, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany

Video contributed by the authors and originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), March 2026

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[the-sidekick-offical]

Hm. You seem edible. Like a bite sized hero

— @villain-offical

I’m actually incredibly toxic!

Please do not eat me!

you will die!

[asanasterisk]

[findchaos]

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[cannedpeachess]

[learnyouabiology]

Aposematism is when a poisonous or otherwise gross/ dangerous/ unprofitable species uses pretty, bright colours (or some other noticeable signal) to warn predators “Do Not Eat!”

Unfortunately, many predators are not born knowing this, so they generally have to learn through trying something new and having a very unpleasant experience!

AKA: aposematism (usually) relies on predator learning!