Animal Camouflage
Animals
in the wild have many natural enemies. A small bird wants to avoid being seen
by a hawk, a zebra doesn’t want the lion to find him, and a flatfish would
prefer that the shark swim quietly by. If an animal can’t easily run away from
its predator, how can it protect itself? One way that have evolved over time is
protective coloring, or camouflage. Many animals find security in blending in
with their environment.
In
bird, for example, although it is quite common for adult males to be brightly
colored and very noticeable, adult females and young chicks are light brown or
sand colored in order to blend into their background and escape the sharp eyes
of predator. This coloring protects the weaker birds. Consider the bright red
cardinal. A very common bird in colder areas of North America. The male is like
a red fire engine against white snow, but you hardly ever see the females. They are sandy brown, with touches of red on
the wings, tail, and breast. The peacock is another bird where the male is
bright and showy, while the female is easily overlooked because of her dull
coloring. The long tail feathers of the male are generally bright green and
gold and have round markings of a rich color, known as peacock blue. The female,
called a peahen, has short tail feathers and is much less colorful than the
male. Adopting camouflage colors helps the female birds survive and raise
another generation of bird.
Many
mammals have also adopted the colors of their surroundings. A zebra is almost
invisible among the branches and stripes of sunlight in its native Africa
because its black and white stripes mimic the shadows among the trees and bushes.
A lion is very hard to see when it is sleeping on the beige sand of the planes.
The lioness, in particular, looks just like a part of the ground until she
raises her head. The camouflage of the lioness make her invisible to her prey so
she can concentrate on hunting and her young .all these mammals have, over many
,many years, developed protective coloring to assist them in the struggle to survive.
Most
fish are darker on top than bottom; from above they look like the land at the
bottom of the water, and from below, they look like the water surface. Many
ocean fish have a horizontal line along they body that parate the top from the
bottom. An ocean mackerel, for example is easily distinguished by this dark
stripe. Some flatfish have taken this
protection a step further; for example, a fish that lives on a rocky bottom has
an upper side that looks like their surroundings, this fish survive and avoid
becoming someone else’s lunch.
Looking
like their environment is helpful to these animals for the survival of the
species. The mother bird that is invisible among the brown leaves, the lion
snoozing on the sandy plains, and the fish that hides among the pebbles will
live to see another day. The safety these animals find in their protective coloring
has helped them survive over the ages.
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