10 Wonderful Examples Of Camouflage In Nature
7) Chameleon
No list of animals that are ace at camouflage would be complete without the most famous of nature’s hide-and-seekers: the chameleon. Chameleons change their colour as a method of communicating mood to their mates and also as a nifty way of not getting eaten.
Recent research shows that these chameleons are even more skilled at hiding than was first thought. They fine tune their colour according to their predator’s visual system. Researchers found that chameleons matched colour with their surroundings more accurately when presented with a model bird than a model snake because a bird’s colour perception is better than a reptiles. Now that’s magic.
8) Cuttlefish
Cuttlefish are really weird. They are the true masters of colour changing ability. Each square millimetre of their skin holds up to 200 colour changing chromatophores. Their ability to change colour is lightning fast and dashingly accurate. They have W-shaped pupils, eight arms, two tentacles with toothy suckers on them and one of the largest brain to body ratios in the invertebrate world.
Watch this video below of an Octopus, another member of the Cephalopoda family. This is literally mind-blowing. Watch the bit when they reverse the footage in slow mo. Honestly, this is the best video I’ve seen for weeks. Nature is WILD:
Here’s a video of chromatophores in action:
It seems that cuttlefish rely on contrast rather than colour when disguising themselves against their background. So if you put them on something blue, as below, they don’t even try to adapt. Cheques? No problem.This is a pretty impressive attempt isn’t it?:
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