Animal Camouflage

26-02-23 00 / episode: 41

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Script

Animal camouflage, wow, that's a big word.

I guess you could say.

The only thing it means is how animals hide themselves in their environment with their their body color or shapes.

Animal camouflage is just the way that animals can blend in with their environment.

That way other animals can't see them.

This is really good for animals that get eaten.

If the big bad guy can't come and find you, then you won't get eaten.

So you want to get camouflage.

It was really interesting when I read about it because there's sort of three strategies for camouflage among animals.

Strategy number one is whenever you get into a new environment, change the color to that environment.

So if you go into green leaves, change green.

If you go into a blue ocean, change blue but not all animals can change that.

Well that leads to strategy number two and that that is don't get totally green and don't get totally blew a little bit of both.

It's kind of a compromise strategy.

So if you're a little bit green, you partly blend in in the green environment and if you're a little bit blue, you partly blend in in the blue environment.

The third strategy, however, is more behavior based, that's where the animal gets basically one solid color or appearance.

For instance, there's a butterfly that looks like a dead leaf and it doesn't go places where there are living leaves, it doesn't land on trees full of all sorts of lively, vibrant green leaves.

It only lands on places where there are other dead leaves so that it looks like one of the other dead leaves.

So strategy number three requires a little bit of a change of behavior in terms of the animal, choosing where it's going to stop, when it's when it's resting or eating.

So how about people? Do people use camouflage to do you use camouflage? That's an interesting question.