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→... and Mimicry
=====... and Mimicry=====
[[Lacan]]'s answer is in the theory of the [[mirror phase]]. He draws our attention, in later texts, to an [[enthological]] curiosity, known as "[[mimicry]]." Certain beasts have the habit of assuming the insignia and coloring of their surroundings. Hence a stick insect may choose to look like a stick. The obvious explanation for this phenomenon is that it protects the animal against predators. But what many investigators found was that those animals which assumed an [[image]] or disguise were just as likely to be eaten as those which didn't.
The US government had commissioned a survey in the early 1930s involving the rather macabre task of examining the stomaches of some 60,000 Neartic birds to confirm this diagnosis by counting the insects which had been swallowed. The ones which had disguised themselves were no less frequent than their most honest companions. So if evolutionary biology cannot provide an answer to the question of [[mimetism]] with the idea of protection from predators, how can it be explained?
[[Roger Caillois]], a French thinker fascinated with the theme of masks, games and the relation of the [[human]] to the [[animal kingdom]], argued that there was a sort of [[natural]] [[law]] whereby ''organisms become [[captured]] in their environment''. They will thus take on the coloring, for example, of the [[space]] around them.
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