Camouflage
What does a polar bear have in common with a frog? They both use camouflage.
If an animal can camouflage itself, it can blend in with its habitat. This makes the animal hard to see.
There are 2 reasons why an animal wants to be hard to see. A small animal wants to avoid being eaten by a predator. A big animal wants to hide from small animals when it is hunting them for food.
Animals live in different habitats, so animals are different colours.
Animals live in different habitats, so animals are different colours.
woodland habitat
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polar habitat
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Camouflage in snow
Animals that live in the Arctic may be white, so they can blend in with the snow and ice. The North Pole is in the Arctic so we say the Arctic is a polar habitat.
Polar bears live in the Arctic.
They can stay still by a hole in the ice waiting for a seal to come out of the water.
This is a snowy owl. It hunts small animals in the Arctic.
Copyrighted free use via Wikimedia Commons.
Some animals change colour when they grow up!
A harp seal is white when it is born. They stay on the Arctic ice for a few weeks drinking their mum's milk.
After 2 weeks, the seal's fur will turn grey and have dark spots. Soon after, they start to swim to hunt for food.
They spend most of their life in the sea.
Some animals change colour when their habitat changes colour! An Arctic fox is white in winter.
Photo via PxHere
In spring the weather gets warmer. It does not need its warm, white fur, so the white fur falls out.
Under the white fur is a new coat of grey-brown fur.
This is a stoat. Stoats live in the UK and in other places.
And this is a stoat too!
By GG Shrike - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In Scotland, stoats turn white in winter because Scotland gets more snow than England.
Camouflage on the ground
Some animals are hard to see because they look like the ground in their habitat.
This frog is called a mossy frog. It looks like moss.
Moss can grow on trees and rocks.
Can you see a frog? It looks like a brown leaf.
It may be called a leaf frog.
Can you see the bird? It looks like the leafy ground.
This bird is called a nightjar.
This spider blends in with the grains of sand at the beach.
Photo from Pixabay is in the public domain.
It may be called a sand running spider.
This snake blends in with the sand in a desert.
By Holger Krisp - Own work, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
The snake is called a horned viper. It waits for an animal to go near it, and then it will attack. It likes to eat lizards.
Camouflage under the sea
A seahorse cannot swim well, so it must hide from predators. Can you spot the seahorse?
It has wrapped its tail around sea coral.
This is a leafy sea dragon. The leafy sea dragon is a fish. It looks like seaweed.
This helps it hide from bigger fish. It swims in the sea near Australia.
An octopus is fantastic at using camouflage. It can change the colour of its skin.
It can look like a plant on the seabed.
This fish is a leopard flounder. Can you see its eyes?
Its eyes stick up on the top of its head.
The fish is a leopard flounder too.
It can change colour like an octopus. The fish swims on the seabed, so it changes colour to match the sand or rocks on the seabed.
Camouflage in grassland
Lions and tigers can blend in with tall, dry grass.
By Bjørn Christian Tørrissen - Own work by uploader, https://bjornfree.com/, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Camouflage in woodland
Some animals use camouflage to hide on and in trees. Can you see an animal below?
By Charles J. Sharp - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
It is a mossy leaf-tailed gecko. It is a reptile. It looks like moss.
By Charles J. Sharp - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
This bug is called a bark mantis. It looks like tree bark.
Can you see all of its legs? How many does it have?
This is another sort of bark mantis. It looks like moss that grows on bark.
This is a screech owl.
It blends in with a tree. It makes a nest in a hole in a tree.
This is a moth. The moth is called the tulip-tree beauty.
This moth is called the great oak beauty.
A baby moth is a caterpillar. This great oak beauty caterpillar looks like a twig.
By Gyorgy Csoka, Hungary Forest Research Institute, Bugwood.org - This image is Image Number 5371377 at Insect Images, a source for entomological images operated by The Bugwood Network at the University of Georgia and the USDA Forest Service.(cropped), CC BY 3.0 us, Wikimedia Commons.
And this insect looks like a stick. It is called a stick insect! Can you see its six legs?
This nightjar looks like a tree if it stays very still.
This is a gray tree frog. It is fantastic at using camouflage. It can change the colour of skin to blend in with its habitat. Here it is looking grey.
By Paleontological Research Institution - Paleontological Research Institution, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
And here it is looking green! It can also turn brown.
This is a tree trunk spider. The trunk of a tree is the main part that grows out of the ground.
By Graham Wise from Brisbane, Australia - Tamopsis brisbanensis. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Camouflage - looking like a leaf
If an animal looks a lot like a different thing, we say that the animal is a mimic. Here are more animals that look a lot like a leaf. (We can say that they mimic leaves.)
This is an oak leaf butterfly. It does not look like a leaf until...
... it shuts its wings!
By Noumenon - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This is a dead leaf mantis.
By Adrian Pingstone - Own work, Public Domain Wikimedia Commons
It is brown like dead leaves that have fallen off a plant.
This is a leaf insect.
This is a leaf-tailed gecko.