what is a scientific word that describes when something rubs off or aquires the characters of something else .

Question

I cant think of the word or exactly what it means and its driving me crazy.
EX: when you are standing next to your friend and you find out that you have the same thing wrong with you (I'm not thinking of contagius either) you would say 'no its not_____.'
Its a science term that happens with plants or animals. (i think)

Answer 1

osmosis

Answer 2

Mimicry.

This is the term most often used by biologists to describe organisms that appear to be the same as some other organism.
See:
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0833262.html

Since you put this under Earth Science and Geology, I will give you some geologic terms:

Polymorphism is the ability of a chemical or mineral to exist as two different forms. An example is calcium carbonate which can be either calcite or aragonite, depending on the crystal form.

Pseudomorphism is another geologic term for one mineral that has replaced another and retains the form of the original replaced mineral.

See:
http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/eens211/twinning.htm

Answer 3

Osmosis --1. n. [Drilling Fluids] ID: 2171

The movement of water from one aqueous system to another through a semipermeable membrane. Osmotic movement is driven by activity differences between the two systems and can be considered as a vapor-phase transfer. An oil mud acts as an osmotic system. Emulsion film surrounding each brine droplet in an oil mud acts as semipermeable osmotic membrane and allows water molecules to pass back and forth, but restricts ions and larger molecules. Clays in shale formations also are aqueous systems that interact by osmosis with oil-mud droplets.

Answer 4

Odd Sympathy

I don't think this is necessarily what you are going for, but read the wiki article and you may get some ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_sympathy