The Defenses of Butterflies: Camouflage

de Camouflage is a type of crypsis (hiding) which allows a visible creature to blend into their environment and thus become difficult to see. Tigers Swallowtails have stripes that help to break up their overall form and modern soldiers wear a camouflage print that has the same effect. By utilizing colors similar to their environment, counter-shading and patterns, the eye of a human or predator is tricked

The Art of Camouflage: There are four main strategies of camouflage: cryptic (or blending), disruptive (or dazzle), mimicry, and countershading.

Cryptic camouflage involves colors and patterns that help an organism blend into their surroundings and become invisible to the eye. The Goatweed Leafwing butterfly (Anaea andria) has the coloration and shape of a dead leaf and becomes nearly invisible on the forest floor among the leaf litter.

The pale yellow wings of the Cloudless Sulphur butterfly help it to blend into sunlit foliage and flowers so that when this butterfly stops and closes its wings it seems to disappear. For an even more impressive show of camouflage, check out the disappearing act of the Red Admiral butterfly (Vanessa atalanta) shown on the Awesome Photography blog.

Disruptive camouflage dazzles the eye by providing visual cues that override the characteristics of creature. The eyespots found on many butterfly and moth species create an image of large, circular eyes often similar to the eyes of predators. Octopus ink is another sort of disruption that catches the eye and disrupts smell and sight to allow the octopus to escape. Eyespots a very diverse and super neat, so I will cover them in their own post.

Mimicry camouflage allows one organism to present itself like another organism, often a dangerous or toxic creature. Mimicry is a complex topic so I’ll cover more about it in a later post.

Another variety of mimicry is called Masquerade. This sort of mimicry describes a living creature’s appearance that is modeled after something innocuous. In the case of the Giant Swallowtail, the caterpillars of this species are mottled brown and white and are often very shiny and look a great deal like bird poop. Birds, one of the main predators of the Giant Swallowtail, may overlook these tasty snacks that look like they have already been eaten and excreted.

Countershading mimicry utilizes coloration to override the normal cues of depth perception. This mimicry employs light coloration in places where dark colors are normally found and dark colors where light ones are normally found. In nature, most animals are lit from above by the sun and thus have a shadow on their undersides.

The Giant Swallowtail butterfly has a dark upper wing and a pale, buttery yellow underside of the wing that is patterned to break up the overall shape of the insect. When viewed from below, this butterfly in flight is harder to see with its pale underside matching the bright pale colors of the sky.

The bright white bellies of many sharks or of salmon are shadowed so that in the wild the become nearly the same color as the darker top side of the animal. This same principle is used in camouflage makeup for the military where light colors are used in the normally shadowed parts of the face like around the eye and darker colors are used for the normally well lit, protruding parts of the face such as the nose. This swap of visual cues for depth perception tricks the eye into seeing a textured face as flat.

Check out some other cool insects and animals exhibiting incredible camouflage over at the Conservation Report blog.