STOCKHOLM, Sweden, June 16 (UPI) -- Swedish scientists say butterflies defend themselves against predators through eyespots on their wings, bluffing birds into thinking they are larger animals.
Adrian Vallin, a zoologist at Stockholm University, worked with peacock butterflies, a species known for its prominent eye spots.
Vallin and his colleagues exposed two groups of butterflies to blue tits, a bird that preys on butterflies. The researchers blacked out the eye spots of one group.
They found that 13 out of 20 of the butterflies that had lost their eye spots ended up in the blue tits' stomachs. Only one out of 34 of the group with eye spots got eaten.
The butterfly apparently bluffs by suddenly unfolding its wings, startling the blue tit into thinking that it might be confronting an owl and about to turn into prey itself.
The research was reported in New Scientist.
