Camouflage

The weekend is upon us … so I offer this for general pondering and musing:

**LINK**

https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/flatfish-camouflage-experiments-1911

I remember learning about this experiment at school, but it’s interesting to see it being popularised via this different channel.

Thanks to my daughter for the link, and to the internet for serving us.

MichaelG.

Is this you sucking up to Mrs AI before she takes over the world Michael? Thinking ahead is a good genetic survival strategy

I've always found the randomness of nature intruiging, all the flatties who couldn't change colour got eaten 10,000 years ago kind of thing

The flower that stinks of meat won, but what did his pals smell like 50,000 years ago

How on earth did the gecko develop spiderman feet

The polar bear whose fur won't let water freeze at minus 10 degrees

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Quite the contrary, Ady … I am giving praise to the internet, for its ability to assist in the dissemination of actual information [i.e. its original intended purpose] and to the wit of humanity to use it.

MichaelG.

I've never heard of the polar bear fur physics, that sounds like it needs a deeper dive! Thanks

Eskimos used polar bear hair to paint water onto wooden skis and give them a protective coating of ice

Early geckoids probably hadda eata lotta spiders...

I think the flatfish experiments were deeply flawed in using a geometric pattern not encountered in nature.

Another property of polar bear fur is that it acts as a light pipe channelling light for heat and vitamin production down to the skin while retaining the insulation properties.

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Please bear in mind that the pictures shared on the ‘Arty’ link that I provided have been selected for their visual appeal … the whole paper is available at the archive.org link and [although the photography is ‘of its time’] is quite rigorous.

If you have the time, and the interest, I suggest you at least skim through pp 409-505 of that journal.

This is a classic piece of work.

MichaelG.

Do their predators see in monochrome or colour? It would be interesting to repeat the experiment using a camera with the same spectral sensitivity as the predators.

Russell

Russell

This is a good start: **LINK**

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.160824

MichaelG.