Animals that camouflage

Camouflage is an animals natural way of self protection and thus ensures not only its survival, but that of future generations. This fascinating adaptation is not just limited to land animals either. Just off the coast of Papua New Guinea there is a beautifully colored tartan hawkfish that its camouflage is the coloring that allows it to blend into its surroundings. Camouflage is largely dependent on the environment that the animal is in, thus allowing for "hiding in plain sight". However, camouflage is also dependent on the predator as well. It does no good for an animal to match the color of its surroundings if the natural predator is color blind.

Now not all animals change colors to blend into their environments either. Believe it or not, sharks have camouflage. They don't change colors, they just naturally match the color of the waters they swim in and thus making it harder for their prey to detect them. Just the same as deer and squirrels have a brownish earthy tone to match their surroundings.

Now there are some animals that change their coloring to match their surroundings. The Arctic fox, for example, changes it's coat during the winter to an all white coloring to match the snowy background of it's habitat. While during the summer months the fur will change to a dirt color, again to blend into the area it lives.

There are some animals that can change colors depending on what they eat as that alters their pigmentation of the outer layer of skin. For example nudibranch (small sea creature) feeds from coral and as they eat, the color of the coral determines the outermost coloring of the creature. This creature not only feeds on the coral but lives there as well, thus providing protection from larger predators. There is also a specific type of camouflage called disruptive camouflage. The best way to understand this is why zebras stay in large groupings. Lions can not see just one zebra in the group as lions are color blind. They only see a large mass and thus protecting the zebra from being singled out of the group. This is also effective if a single zebra is within tall grasses as the lion can't see just the zebra within the surroundings.and around the leg. This enables the animal to be tracked so that we can study just what they do during the migration period.

suni
white bat
painted bat
black-bellied fruit bat
Peters's tube-nosed bat
mountain hare
snowshoe hare
pale-throated three-toed sloth
This list has been generated automatically and therefore can contain errors, please keep that in mind.