I drink a lot of tea. Tea has a lot of tannins. Will I turn green?

Old news. Maybe you should get a current subscription to Science or Nature?

@2, Mendel was also very old news in the 1930s. please do not apply the criteria for a blog post on a science paper.

Nature is fucking amazing! Thanks for sharing, Charles. Ignore @2, and keep sharing cool shit that you find out about.

How do you explain it? Well, maybe the Nemoria caterpillars that evolved to look like the food they were eating (even as it changes through the seasons) were less likely to be eaten by predators in turn because they masked themselves so well.

It must be a an adaptation for survival. And I would assume that the predators of these catepillars also change with the seasons. Maybe migratory birds, other insects or lizards.

Meaning, it not only looks like what it eats, but if what it eats changes, it changes with it.

Well, technically "it" (the caterpillar) doesn't change. It's brothers & sisters in the next generation change, but for any one individual caterpillar once they strike off down a path of mimicry they are set for life.

Makes one wonder if there is a caterpillar racism/classism in play between the flower-mimic tribe and the twig-mimic tribe along the borderline of seasons.

Polymorphism! How does it work? It's a miracle! :D

On a more serious, non-ICP note, perhaps it has something to do with evolutionary pressures. Or perhaps Lamarck was actually --as I believe-- somewhat correct.

Crazy! It's the opposite of the story of how traits are handed down genetically. It's as if there really were giraffes with longer necks because their parents stretched for food a lot.

Aphids do something weird too: when their food grows scarce they automatically start growing wings. (One website says some species do this if they get kicked too much too, which happens from overcrowding.) Insects basically have superpowers.