Mimesis

Mimesis is a kind of imitation other than mere copying. It's a sort of "presenting again" or re-presentation. Colloquially speaking, it's "Monkey see, monkey do."

Walter Benjamin wrote:

Nature creates similarities. One need only think of mimicry. The highest capacity for producing similarities, however, is man’s. His gift of seeing resemblances is nothing other than a rudiment of the powerful compulsion in former times to become and behave like something else. Perhaps there is none of his higher functions in which his mimetic faculty does not play a decisive role. Michelle Puetz, University of Chicago