Animal Camouflage
Know that camouflage uses colours, patterns or shapes to help animals blend into their surroundings. It can help them avoid predators or approach prey. Examples include leaf insects, striped tigers and Arctic hares with white fur in snow.
What a learner can do afterwards
- Explains that camouflage means blending in with surroundings
- Gives at least 3 examples of camouflaged animals
- Explains that camouflage helps animals hide from predators or sneak up on food
1 · Read
Animals live in different homes. Camouflage uses colour, pattern or shape to help an animal blend into its surroundings. It makes spotting harder, not impossible. Spots and stripes are patterns. Shape is the outline of the body.
A predator hunts other animals for food. Its prey is the animal it hunts. A bird hunting a leaf insect is a predator. The insect is its prey. A green leaf insect's leaf-shaped body can help it hide among green leaves.
Arctic hares have white winter fur. Some have brownish-grey fur in summer, while others stay white all year. White fur can help a hare blend into snow.
A tiger's stripes help break up its outline among plants. This can make the tiger harder to spot as it approaches prey. A pattern can help without matching every colour around it.
Camouflage helps animals blend in. A leaf insect among leaves can hide from birds. A white Arctic hare blends in with snow. A tiger's stripes help hide its outline among plants as it approaches prey. Camouflage can help prey avoid predators. It can also help predators approach prey.
Compare an animal with its surroundings. White fur matches snow better than brown ground. Shape, pattern, movement and hiding places matter too. Movement can reveal a colour-matched animal. When these clues differ, colour alone cannot tell which animal is harder to spot. Matching does not guarantee safety. A display meant to attract attention has a different job from hiding.
To test a background's effect, keep the animal picture unchanged. Change only the background. If both change, you cannot tell which change affected spotting.
Camouflage can use colour, pattern or shape. It can help prey hide and predators approach prey. It does not make animals invisible.
Readings written for this dataset.
More to read
Who is hiding from whom?
A bird hunts a leaf insect. In this hunt, the bird is the predator and the insect is its prey. The insect's leaf-like body can help it avoid being noticed. A tiger is a predator too. Its striped coat can help it approach prey among plants. Camouflage can help either side of a hunt, but it does not guarantee that either animal will be safe or catch food.
The background matters
Picture a white hare against white snow. Now picture the same hare against brown ground after the snow melts. Its fur has not changed, but the background has. White matches the snow better than the brown ground. Colour is only one clue when looking for an animal. Movement, body shape and hiding places can affect what you notice too.
A shape or a pattern can help
Camouflage is not limited to matching colours. A leaf insect has a body that resembles a leaf. A tiger's stripes help break up its outline among plants. These are different ways to blend in. When you explain camouflage, name the animal's feature and what surrounds it. Then explain how that feature could make the animal harder to spot.
2 · Watch
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Where this leads
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