The Spider-winged Cupid and the Platypus

This book develops and extends the author’s views about the evolution and defensive aspects of mimicry in butterflies and moths set out in ‘Seeing Butterflies’; focusing on  some of the most incredible insect mimicry that exists in tropical forests throughout the world.

It reveals what no museum collection can tell us about the evolution of mimicry that has produced creatures that can be mistaken by predators for dead leaves, toxic beetles, scorpions, venomous snakes, lizards, frogs, bats, or insect-eating birds. A selection from hundreds of thousands of photographic images shows how butterflies and moths in their natural environment deceive their enemies by their colour patterns and behaviour.

The Spider-winged Cupid and the Platypus introduces us to an amazing world that most naturalists and biologists never knew existed, and explains why this is so. For biologists this book opens up a new dimension to our understanding of evolutionary theory. For others it will, it is hoped, intensify their desire to help preserve the precious environments in which these seemingly alien but astonishingly beautiful insects are to be found.