Every kid knows that to avoid getting bullied, it helps to not stand out. Apparently woodpeckers know this, too: In a paper due to be published in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, researchers reveal that the Helmeted Woodpecker mimics the plumage of other, larger woodpecker species in order to stave off harassment. To the casual observer, the vulnerable Helmeted Woodpecker looks very similar to two more aggressive species with which it share the forests of Brazil: the Lineated Woodpecker and the Robust Woodpecker. In fact, the Helmeted Woodpecker looks so much like a smaller version of the Lineated Woodpecker that for decades, scientists assumed that the two were closely related. “Those two look so darned similar, with the black back and red crest and lined neck,” says Mark Robbins, one of the authors of the study and a biologist at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute. 3662 But over the last few years, researchers began to suspect that the Helmeted Woodpecker...