Mimicry: The Art of Deception Among Orchids
January 23, 2013—A National Geographic explorer tries to understand the delicate mechanisms that make lying a wild success among plants. (Video courtesy Jacky Poon,
www.jackypoon.org , Tim Laman and Ed Scholes.)
How far would you go to reproduce? Would you disguise yourself as someone else?
I'm Lucie McNeil, and this is National Geographic On Assignment—your link to thousands of Nat Geo expeditions around the globe.
Today, we're off to the cloud forests of Northeastern Ecuador where National Geographic's Bitty Roy studies orchid species that look and smell like nearby mushrooms.
Nature has its imposters—like the milk snake posing as the deadly coral snake—and
even plants are known to mimic other species.
Bitty thinks the mimicking orchids are trying to attract a particular fly, which helps the plants pollinate. These flies—usually attracted to the mushrooms—help spread
the orchid's pollen, thereby aiding reproduction.
Orchids are plentiful here, so the fakery is paying off.
That's National Geographic On Assignment—your link to our Explorers.
