It's hard enough to navigate life when you know who's who. But with many plants and animals, things are not what they seem. A species pretends to be something it's not if there's a sexual or survival advantage to be had, and so mimicry abounds.

Here's one of the all-time classic con jobs in the animal kingdom. The monarch butterfly is poisonous. The viceroy butterfly (pictured) is not, but evolved a copycat image of the monarch to fool predators who have learned to associate this orange-and-black-with-white-spots color scheme with the unpleasant experience of trying to eat a monarch.

It's not quite an identical copy (it's got an extra black stripe on its wing), but it's close enough to keep viceroys thriving rather than becoming prey.