Camouflage and survival
Biology · Key Stage 2 · The School
Blending in
CAMOUFLAGE is a colour or pattern. It helps an animal blend into its surroundings. A well-camouflaged animal is much harder to spot. That can help it hide from a hunter. It can also help it sneak up on its own prey, unseen. Camouflage can be a matter of life or death.
Two kinds of camouflage
A stick insect looks almost exactly like a real twig. This is one kind of camouflage: looking like an object. A polar bear has white fur that matches the snow. This is a different kind: simple colour matching. Both work in a similar way. Both hide the animal in plain sight. Neither method involves the animal actually moving or hiding.
Why camouflage helps survival
An animal that is hard to see is less likely to get eaten. It lives longer. It gets more chances to have young. Over many years, animals with better camouflage tend to survive more often than animals without it. Those young often inherit the very same helpful colouring.
A peppered moth can be pale, speckled, or almost black. Long ago, pale moths blended in well against pale tree bark, so birds could not spot them easily. Dark moths stood out and were eaten more often. Then pollution turned many tree trunks dark with soot. Suddenly the dark moths blended in better, and the pale ones stood out instead. Over time, dark moths became far more common in polluted areas. The camouflage that helped a moth survive had completely flipped, once its surroundings changed.