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Great tits that exhibit disgust when they eat a horrible meal may inadvertently be driving their prey to evolve.
Many prey animals have evolved deterrents so that predators will be reluctant to eat them: they may have an unpalatable taste or even be poisonous. They often signal this with bright and contrasting colours, like the yellow and black stripes of a wasp.
But it鈥檚 not clear how these 鈥渁posematic鈥 signals evolved. 鈥淧redators need to first learn the signal before they avoid it, but until they do these prey are very easy to detect and kill,鈥 says
