What If I Told You Camouflage is a Myth? Animal Coloration is Mainly A-biotic and not Biotic (Camouflage)

Abstract

In the present article, the author posits that the perception that animals apparently display a strategy of avoiding detection by means of camouflage—i.e., by disguising themselves in the natural colours of their environment—is not the actual case in nature but, rather, merely anecdotal. Animal coloration is mainly a-biotic (eco-physiological) and not biotic (camouflage). The contention regarding the absence of the phenomenon of camouflage among animals as a common evolutionary response is based on three arguments: 1) that reflecting the natural colours of the environment is linked to ecophysiology; 2) that predator and prey constitute “an evolutionary pair” and, accordingly, they know how to identify one another (in order to survive they employ different strategies, of which camouflage is not one of them); and 3) that the approach of relating animal camouflage to reflecting the colours of the environment is an anthropocentric one. Rather than the accepted biotic-ethological approach (colour camouflage), the present article suggests the recognition of a-biotic and eco-physiological conditions as a distinct research field, whose title “Reflection of environmental colours by animals”, along with this article, calls for eco-physiologists to demonstrate that this approach indeed offers a special contribution to the understanding of colouration in animals.