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Message: <blockquote data-quote="brilsly" data-source="post: 1268002" data-attributes="member: 68493">In response to your second point (a casual style), do you know if prey species are reacting differently to these types of flight? I imagine it would actually be useful to a raptor if it didn't cause alarm-calling everywhere it went and could pass "incognito" so to speak. But very cunning if it's part of a devious strategy to catch prey out. As to the flight mimicry. I've searched the literature and found the butterfly stuff on Heliconius species. It's by Rob Srygley and Charlie Ellington. They found that wing-beat frequency and asymmetry were closer between species which look like one another (co-mimics) than ones that were related by descent. It'd be fantastic to be able to prove changing flight characteristics in hunting raptors. But would you be able to show that it wasn't something to do with optimising flight characteristics in a chase approach? I'm guessing it would also be tough to get rigorous quantitative data (they recorded butterflies in a windtunnel..not so useful here)? Maybe video recordings would be accurate enough to pick out wing beat frequency, but depth and demeanour I can imagine would be ever so slightly trickier....</blockquote>