Dazzled and deceived : mimicry and camouflage / Peter Forbes.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [256]-276) and index.

1. Darwinians, mockers and mimics -- 2. Swallowtails and Amazon -- 3. Delight in deception -- 4. Pangenesis -- 5. On the wings of angels -- 6. Dazzle in the dock: The First World War -- 7. Camouflage and cubism in the First World War -- 8. Hopeful monsters? -- 9. The natural history of the visual pun -- 10. Cannibals and Sunshields -- 11. Dazzle (revisited) to D-Day -- 12. From butterflies to babies and back -- 13 The aromas of mimicry -- 14 The tinkerer's palette -- 15.The Heliconius variations -- 16. A shifting spectrum

Dazzled and Deceived tells the unique and fascinating story of mimicry and camouflage in science, art, warfare, and the natural world. Discovered in the 1850s by the young English naturalists Henry Walter Bates and Alfred Russel Wallace in the Amazonian rainforest, the phenomenon of mimicry was seized upon as the first independent validation of Darwin's theory of natural selection. But mimicry and camouflage also created a huge impact outside the laboratory walls. Peter Forbes's cultural history links mimicry and camouflage to art, literature, military tactics, and medical cures across the twentieth century, and charts its intricate involvement with the perennial dispute between evolution and creationism.