NATURES AID

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXX, Issue 12200, 12 March 1934, Page 3

NATURES AID

CAMOUFLAGE FOR. ANIMALS A hunter in the jungle heard a sound like a sneeze. He looked closely and saw a zebra standing among the tall grass. When 30 or 40 zebras ■gallopcdrawiiy, - ho realised-that - • .-he had been in the middle of a herd, and stood still, their stripes blending with the jungle grass. In an .artist’s painting from life of a. peacock in its natural surrounding, only part- of the tail of the bird is distinguishable from . the fauna.

Mr W. Boardman, Asistant, Zoologist at the Australian. Museum, says tho leopard’s spots form a- pattern that blends with the shadows of leaves. The stripe,s of the tiger blend with the short yellow grass the animal inhabits, and -with thb ishadow of tlie tiger’s body. A bird of the Rocky Mountains is white during the snow season, particoloured when the thaws sets in, and indistinguishable from grass during the summer.

A rattlesnake lying still on stones can hardly be detected, so well does the broken coloration of its body camouflage it.

The loaf-butterfly, which 'folds its bright wings and' shows only the undersides, veined and colored like leaves, draws up its legs, was indistinguishable from leaves in a picture Mr Boardman showed. A fish of the Liver Nile, which swims upside down; four-eyed fish, with eyes divided so that if swims looking out of tho water- and, at the same time, underneath it; a fish that, is usually drab but, when annoyed, becomes brightly colored as a • rainbow, these creatures were also mentioned by Mr Boardman.