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Camouflage is colouring that makes an animal less visible. It helps prey hide from predators, but it also helps predators sneak up on prey: some groupers lie still on the sea floor waiting for food.

Background matching: the animal looks like its surroundings. A fawn's spots blend with the forest floor, a stick insect looks like a twig, and the decorator crab even sticks algae and bits of rubbish onto its shell.

Disruptive colouration: spots and stripes break up the outline of the body, so the eye cannot pick out the animal's shape. Tigers, leopards, cheetahs and boa constrictors use it.

Experiment: Which colour is hardest to find? A fair test

1. Cut 5 caterpillars of each colour, all the same size (for example 4 cm by 1 cm): 20 in total.
2. Predict which colour will be found least often and write down why.
3. One group scatters all 20 caterpillars on the same area of lawn while the 'predators' look away.
4. A predator has 30 seconds to pick up as many as possible, one at a time.
5. Count how many of each colour were found, put them back and repeat with two different predators.
6. Add up the results. Which colour 'survived' best? Is the test fair?

Colour	Found (test 1)	Found (test 2)	Found (test 3)	Total
Green	Prediction
Brown	Prediction
Grey	Prediction
Yellow	Prediction

Questions

1. Name the four camouflage tricks you learned about and give one animal for each.

2. Why is a snowshoe hare in danger if it turns white before the snow falls?

3. In your fair test, which things did you keep the same?

4. Which colour survived best in your test? Why do you think so?

Sources for every fact on this sheet: echoesof.science/school/camouflage/sources/

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