Camouflage Memes

Natural selection has left the chat. While most animals sensibly evolved camouflage to avoid becoming someone's lunch, birds decided to go full peacock and become walking disco balls. It's like they missed the evolutionary memo on "try not to get eaten" and instead chose "die fabulous." The shiny plumage that attracts mates also attracts predators—nature's way of ensuring only the most ridiculously flamboyant genes survive. Darwin is somewhere shaking his head.

Evolution really said "survive but make it fashion." These maple seeds and rosy maple moth are basically nature's runway models. Natural selection typically favors camouflage that helps species avoid predation, but sometimes it throws in some fabulousness for free. That moth didn't need to be pink and yellow - could've just been brown like 99% of moths - but it chose the evolutionary equivalent of saying "eat me if you can find me, but you'll be eliminating the most stylish thing in this forest." Classic risk-reward scenario we see in adaptive radiation studies, except with more sass.