In order to study mimicry in biology or semiotics, it would be useful to have an overview of the scope of meaning and different ramifications of the concept. Historically, mimicry as a concept derives from far outside biology and belongs to the concept family of mimesis, mime, imitation, etc. It is important to note here that mimicry as a peculiar biological phenomenon also has a connection to the human experience of misperceiving environmental objects or animals and to our abilities of imitating sounds and gestures of other organisms. Mimicry is related to the general ways in which we use our perceptual and cognitive capacities to make the environment meaningful and how these capacities can be directed, tricked or manipulated. Natural phenomena with several partially contradicting properties have probably been attractive to the human observer since prehistoric times. American anthropologist of religion Stewart E. Guthrie has described the existence of objects that are hard to classify as a cause of animistic belief systems (Guthrie 1993). An ability to perceive something as something else appears to have a strong linkage with illusion, belief, magic, imitation and imagination. Mimicry also has a relation to artistic creativity—mimesis—which is also supported by the etymology and history of the mimicry concept.