CAN YOU SEE ME?

Hi all, welcome to What's around us. It's been a very long time after I posted my previous article. Quite busy with my work and find very less time for blogging. Well, I will be playing hide seek like this at times 😜 okie.. jokes apart. During my childhood hide and seek game used to be my favourite. But I used to get caught soon because of my jingling tingling anklets which I used to wear it then. Girls without anklets were not likely to get caught. Simple funda isn't it.  

Yes. This simple funda saves the lives of many organisms in this world. Animals try to keep themselves being unnoticed in order to not get caught from their predators. In this funda of escapism from predators, hide and seek is also one. In technical term, it is referred to as camouflage. Let's see how an organism tries to hide from danger or predator.

Camouflage is a process where animals blend with their surroundings to escape from their predators. It is seen in case of molluscs, insects, lizards, birds and even mammals. Camouflage is of 3 types, concealing colouration, disruptive behaviour, disguise and mimicry.

1. Concealing colouration:
In case of concealing colouration, the animals blend their body colours with their surroundings. For example birds, lizards.

 

Iguana blending its body colour with the colour of grills in Snake Park, Chennai, India
Photography by Vinod MV (AE, Bescom)

 

 Common baron camouflaging amidst the dried leaves
Photography by Rakshith Raj

 

Calotes (Garden lizard) camouflaging amdist dried grasses
Photography by Rakshith Raj

Grasshopper's vibrant green colour is to camouflage within green bushes..

Photography by Sangeetha Michahial

A species of Calotes whose body colour is similar to the rock.
Waynad, Kerala, India
Photography by Sangeetha Michahial

Dragon fly completely unseen in first look.. Try once again 😅

Photography by Rakshith Raj

This is a moth variety whose wings are very similar to the ground.

Photography by Rakshith Raj

I bet you can't notice this at first look.

Photography by Sangeetha Michahial

It's a gecko species showing high quality of camouflage behaviour. And this is my favourite of all.. 

House gecko

Iguana showing the most unique behaviour

chameleon can change its colour based on the background, the fact behind this trait is chameleons have transparent skin and as it sits on the particular object or tree it tries to mimic it's colour as reflection. The skin bears many pigment cells and gunanie crystals which helps in this reflection.

Along with this you can see frogs showing colouration similar to the background. This is not an edited picture, taken from the cage of Snake Park in Chennai, India..This is another beautiful photography by my elder brother (Vinod MV)

This was a tricky one for me as well when I had been for field visit in my college, unless my colleague could show this pretty one. It's quite clear in the picture that a larvae of a butterfly is nesting on the leaf of lemon plant. But in reality this was a very tricky task to locate..

Caterpillar hiding near the grasses

Bee variety hiding in the plant 

You must be thinking this has nothing to do with camouflage right.. Infact No. This house gecko is clearly seen on the white paper background. But when I located this it was on the litter on the left side. If I had taken a photo of the same on the litter I think nobody could have located it easily. 

2. Disruptive colouration:

 In this case the animals breaking up the outlines of animals. Like stripes of tiger, zebra, spots of cheetah or deer etc... 

Spotted deer showing the disruptive pattern in the scrub jungle of Bandipur forest. 

Photography by Mahesh (Faculty of English) 

Sambhar deer showing disruptive pattern in the jungle of Bandipur forest. Photography by Mahesh (Faculty of English) 

Tortoise showing disruptive behaviour caught in Snake Park, Chennai, India.. 

Photography by Vinod MV.. 

3. Disguise: 

In this case, the animals blend with the surroundings and look like another object. It completely looks different than its actual appearance. 

 

This is a fruit piercing moth has its upper wings like that of leaves.. when is it sucking the nectar from the plant sap predators cannot make out as it completely looks like a leaf.. 

Molluscs looks different than shown. The shells are not the exact shape of the organism. The shell helps them to hide within it and this confuses the predator whether it is alive or a dead one. 

Certain larvae of the insects develops a shield of sticks around itself and this looks completely different from the actual organism.

 Photography by Sangeetha Michahial

4. Mimicry:

In this case animals pretends to look dangerous, poisonous or pretends to be of having bad taste by producing vibrant colour patterns, pungent odour etc. 

This moth has large eyes (false eyes like higher mammals) on the wings to scare the predators. Photography by Rakshith Raj.. 

You can check in this link to know more about the false eyes in my previous article why do insects have eyespots on their wings? 

https://whatsaroudus.blogspot.com/2019/05/why-do-insects-have-eyespots-on-their.html

So that's it for the day. I hope you enjoyed seeing how the animals develops various body colours, patterns, odour and other mechanisms to escape from the predators. You can share about camouflaging behaviour in the comment section. See you soon with another interesting article. Till then bye bye..