Poisonous frogs and other venomous animals often have bright
colors that make the animal clearly conspicuous. Animals that are
nonvenomous are seldom conspicuous. The usual explanation provided for
the conspicuous features is that conspicuous features have a fitness
value by alerting hungry animals that this is a venomous animal. I have
a question concerns the first steps in the evolution of the both
conspicuous color and venomous.

Consider the environment that existed before the conspicuous
coloration evolved in the frog. No frog predator has yet evolved to
recognize the correlation between conspicuous coloration and venom. The
frog population probably has a mixture of venomous and nonvenomous
frogs, as this is a perfectly plausible random variation. At the very
beginning of the evolutionary process, there is no correlation between
venomousity and conspicuousness. That is the definition of "random".

Sat, 9 Sep 2006 13:40:08 -0400 (EDT), drosen0000@yahoo.com wrote:

drosen0000@yahoo.com wrote:

Is the conspicous colour definitely to "alert predators", or is it that
there is no selective preasure on poisonous animals to develope
camoflage?

Is there a selective preasure for certain animals to mimic the colours
of poisonous animals?