Hiding in Plain Sight
How Animals Avoid Predation Through Color
In the wild, conserving energy is crucial. Many organisms will spend a significant portion of their waking hours in search of food, and lost foraging time can be the difference between life and death. This poses a problem for animals that face predation: how do you leave your shelter for long enough to find food without getting eaten? Over time, natural selection and the constant cycle of predator-prey interactions have shaped the evolution of a wide range of camouflage tactics. Some of these solutions are so elegant that humans have adapted them for their own use.
One of the most classic examples of camouflage in the animal kingdom is known as disruptive patterning, an adaptation that relies heavily on the use of color and is seen commonly in both predators and prey. This strategy relies on the fact that sight-dependent animals like humans naturally perceive objects by detecting their outline. Disruptive patterning hinders this by ‘breaking up’ the outline of the organism with spots, stripes, or patches of another color. The patterns may look random, but studies suggest that its effectiveness depends on a lot of factors. Regularity, for example, must be avoided. One study showed that it’s much easier for the eye to take in an object with geometrically symmetrical patterning than one without rhyme or reason. Another study, performed with marine isopods, indicates that patterning may occur at the outline of the body more frequently than predicted — another indication that this is a highly developed evolutionary tactic.
Disruptive patterning is commonly seen in animals that travel in large groups, like zebras or schooling fish. The presence of irregular spots or stripes across a group of individuals serves to dissolve their individual outlines, making a hundred organisms seem more like a shifting, singular mass. Predators are less able to single out specific targets, and thus the chance of survival is increased for all individuals in the group. That doesn’t mean this adaptation is seen only in schooling animals; the stripes and spots of many big cats are a good example of the way solitary creatures use disruptive coloration to ‘melt’ into the background and avoid detection.
The theory of disruptive patterning was alluded to in the late 1800s, but it was only expanded upon by G. H. Thayer in 1909. The U.S. government, seeing its military potential, was able to adopt this knowledge in time for World War I. The mottled gray-green pattern still used for military uniforms and equipment today relies on the same set of rules that govern natural disruptive patterning: the colors match the environment, and randomized patches break up the outline of soldiers or vehicles so they are difficult to spot from far away.
There’s more than one way to avoid predation. Certain animals, like the Dendrobatoidea family of frogs, have evolved to use color in a way that at first seems counterintuitive: instead of blending into their environment, they adopt bright hues that are practically fluorescent against the dull backdrop of the rainforests where they live. For these amphibians, which are more commonly known as poison dart frogs, color is a warning: a single individual can contain enough toxins to kill 10 grown men. Why hide when you can ensure that nothing would want to eat you in the first place? This use of flashy colors and patterns to deter predators is so effective that it caused the evolution of another type of camouflage, known as Batesian mimicry. Many non-toxic species of frogs, reptiles, and insects have evolved to imitate their less palatable neighbors, providing a deceptive and unique way to hide from their predators.
While humans aren’t exactly capable of replicating this method of camouflage, we are still skilled imitators in our own way. Rather than looking like another species, mimicry among humans is intraspecific and often behavioral. A study performed in 1999 placed people in a room with a stranger who would exhibit a specific, repetitive movement, like tapping their foot, while performing an unrelated task. The subjects would usually mimic that behavior in the moment, but be unable to recall it afterwards. This subconscious tendency is likely a remnant of our long history as a social species, but it continues to be relevant in our interactions with each other. Next time you interact with someone, watch their body language — if they mimic yours, it’s often a sign of friendship or agreement.
