Scarlet Kingsnake

The scarlet kingsnake is a masterful liar that has built its survival on the coral snake's honest reputation. Its red, yellow, and black bands closely resemble the venomous coral snake's pattern, deterring predators who've learned to fear that coloration. The difference, captured in the mnemonic 'red touches yellow, kills a fellow; red touches black, friend of Jack,' is too subtle for most predators to parse. The kingsnake is completely harmless but enjoys protection from the coral snake's lethal investment in warning signals.

This Batesian mimicry represents free-riding on public goods. The coral snake pays the metabolic cost of producing venom and the risk of educating predators through painful encounters. The kingsnake simply copies the visual output without any of the investment. The strategy works only because coral snakes are common enough to maintain predator education—if coral snakes disappeared, predators would unlearn their avoidance, and the mimicry would become worthless.

The business parallel is companies that benefit from industry-wide investments they didn't fund. Generic drug manufacturers free-ride on originator companies' R&D and brand-building. Contract manufacturers benefit from brand owners' marketing investments. These mimics must remain less common than the 'honest' players they copy—if generics dominated, consumers would lose trust in the entire category.

Geographic research reveals the mimicry's contingent nature: scarlet kingsnakes are better mimics where coral snakes are common and poorer mimics where coral snakes are rare. Evolution optimizes the investment in mimicry based on local benefit. Similarly, business free-riding intensifies where honest players are common (making copied signals valuable) and diminishes where they're rare (making the copied signal meaningless).