No, It’s Not a Snake…

That may look like a snake, but it’s actually a hawkmoth caterpillar. How could something that amazing be created by “randomness”? It couldn’t, of course. It came about by natural selection, as Richard Dawkins explains in The Greatest Show On Earth:

If you were a bird, out hunting caterpillars in a forest, what would you do if you were suddenly confronted with a snake? Leap back startled, would be my guess, and then give it a wide berth. Well, there is a caterpillar — to be precise, the rear end of a caterpillar — that bears an unmistakable resemblance to a snake…. [it] gains protection because [it] looks like something else.

The birds usually stay away from the tails that look like snakes, and the more closely it resembles a snake head, the less likely it will be eaten. After millions of years of this, you get a snake head. Perhaps not the most efficient of processes, but pretty damned effective over the long haul.