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How Animal Camouflage Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Hooray that makes
0:19
Speaker 1: this stuff. He should know. That's right. How's it going.
0:23
Speaker 1: It's going well great. You got your candy soda canned
0:29
Speaker 1: diet soda with um. Unfortunately it contains then old keytoe nerrics. Yeah,
0:39
Speaker 1: there's a big problem. Have you looked into that well,
0:41
Speaker 1: I mean I don't drink that stuff is a rule
0:43
Speaker 1: because of all the junk in it. No, but have
0:45
Speaker 1: you ever looked into that condition It's a metabolic conditioning
0:48
Speaker 1: where it's like you can't have protein basically, but you
0:51
Speaker 1: also have to live interesting. Yeah, it's it sounds terrible.
0:55
Speaker 1: I know. You can clean a toilet with candy soda
0:59
Speaker 1: and you can make a penny shiny overnight. Yeah. You
1:02
Speaker 1: can loosen um rusted nuts and bolts. Yeah, or you
1:07
Speaker 1: can drink it. Right. That's the most delicious move is
1:10
Speaker 1: go juice. It is go juice of the type you
1:15
Speaker 1: know me, I like my orange soda every now and
1:17
Speaker 1: then they'll like the wippony lou that in a root
1:21
Speaker 1: beer is about all roos. Great. What about cream soda? Yeah,
1:25
Speaker 1: you're not a big cream soda now, it's fine. I'll
1:27
Speaker 1: have I have one of those every two years. I'll
1:29
Speaker 1: have it's about five root beers a year and about
1:33
Speaker 1: teneam in your fridge with like a little bit of
1:37
Speaker 1: masking tape so they're numbered. No, I don't buy them
1:40
Speaker 1: to keep them in the house. They just you should.
1:43
Speaker 1: It's probably cheaper by Yeah, and this is not a
1:47
Speaker 1: big statement on health and wellness. My family didn't buy
1:51
Speaker 1: that stuff growing up because we were you know, they
1:53
Speaker 1: were teachers and we didn't have a ton of money
1:55
Speaker 1: and would drink water, just water, a lot of water
1:59
Speaker 1: to real especially in restaurants. We'll just have water. Yeah,
2:03
Speaker 1: that kind of deal because the other stuff costs money.
2:06
Speaker 1: But in retrospect, I'm glad, you know, because I never
2:08
Speaker 1: developed a big affinity for SODA's. Yeah. No, it's pretty
2:12
Speaker 1: great for your mom. Yeah, so thanks mom for the
2:15
Speaker 1: for the milk and water way to go. So Chuck,
2:18
Speaker 1: I would say this is a perfect segue to what
2:20
Speaker 1: we're talking about today. Animal camouflage. Yeah, we covered a
2:25
Speaker 1: little bit of the uh this in the Coolest Animal Ever,
2:30
Speaker 1: The Octopus podcast. Yeah. We also talked about your descence
2:34
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, and how to butterfly wings get their color? Yeah,
2:38
Speaker 1: that was you know when people say, like, what's an
2:41
Speaker 1: episode that that everybody overlooks that you thought it was great?
2:44
Speaker 1: There's like fifty of them at least more like Um,
2:50
Speaker 1: but I would say that the butterfly wings episode is
2:52
Speaker 1: a really startling example of that where it's just like,
2:55
Speaker 1: you think it's gonna be boring, but it led us
2:58
Speaker 1: into all sorts of stuff optics, color, butterflies, migration, like
3:03
Speaker 1: all sorts of really cool stuff light. Yeah. Um, that
3:06
Speaker 1: one turned out to be really neat. Yeah, and you
3:08
Speaker 1: know what you just reminded me. Um, we should mention
3:11
Speaker 1: that we have close to seven hundred podcasts now, we're
3:14
Speaker 1: really close and a lot of people that maybe find
3:17
Speaker 1: us via iTunes or another pod player, thank you, might
3:20
Speaker 1: we might only have like three hundred. Yeah, it's funny
3:22
Speaker 1: to see that triumphant tweet, like, just listen to all
3:24
Speaker 1: three episodes of Steven should know my life is completely like,
3:28
Speaker 1: oh boy, I'm so sorry. You got a long road
3:30
Speaker 1: to home. But you can find all those we have
3:32
Speaker 1: an RSS if you just google stuff. You should Know RSS,
3:35
Speaker 1: or go to our website Stuff you should dot Com
3:37
Speaker 1: click under podcasts. We have all seven hundred of them there. Yeah,
3:40
Speaker 1: you can also search stuff you Should Know archive and
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Speaker 1: it should bring up the archive page on our website,
3:45
Speaker 1: which has every single episode of Stuff you Should Know ever,
3:48
Speaker 1: and I think you can download them there too, can't
3:50
Speaker 1: you think? So who knows in this day and age
3:53
Speaker 1: twenty one century, it's right, So animal camouflaged chuckers. Yes. Also,
3:58
Speaker 1: I want to give a shout out to a board
4:00
Speaker 1: panda um article twenty amazing examples of animal animal camouflage.
4:06
Speaker 1: It's nuts. Some of the stuff these animals are doing
4:09
Speaker 1: these days. It's pretty cool. And you know, I because
4:12
Speaker 1: they want to live. Yeah, it's natural selection at work,
4:15
Speaker 1: which is kind of like it's happening right in front
4:19
Speaker 1: of our eyes. We've covered natural selection at length in
4:21
Speaker 1: that episode, in the Darwin episode. But as we all know,
4:25
Speaker 1: if an animal gets munched on or stomped on, it's
4:29
Speaker 1: not gonna be around. So it adapts into the world
4:31
Speaker 1: around me and says, hey, I think I might want
4:33
Speaker 1: to look like that twig or might want to blend
4:36
Speaker 1: in color wise, then I won't get eaten and I'm
4:38
Speaker 1: gonna pass that down to my kids and they won't
4:41
Speaker 1: get eaten, and all of a sudden, we're a healthy,
4:43
Speaker 1: thriving species. Yeah. And through natural selection, an animal that
4:47
Speaker 1: has a trait that keeps it from being eaten allows
4:51
Speaker 1: it to, say, blend in. It raises the likelihood that
4:54
Speaker 1: it will live long enough to reproduce to pass it on.
4:57
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, an animal that say, rightly
5:00
Speaker 1: colored and stands out in its environment, it's probably gonna
5:03
Speaker 1: get picked off early on won't have a chance to reproduce,
5:06
Speaker 1: so whatever traits it has won't necessarily be passed along. Yeah,
5:10
Speaker 1: and that's why almost every animal that you'll see on
5:14
Speaker 1: the planet Earth has some sort of blending in capability. Um.
5:20
Speaker 1: Not always. You know, you'll see a big blue bird
5:22
Speaker 1: in the middle of the woods obviously you're a cardinal,
5:24
Speaker 1: but you'll also see a lot of deer and squirrels
5:27
Speaker 1: and ground mammals that are sort of browny and gray. Yeah,
5:31
Speaker 1: it's not because they're just drabbed, because there again trying
5:34
Speaker 1: to survive exactly. They blend in with those earth tones.
5:37
Speaker 1: And if you look in the ocean, um, you will
5:40
Speaker 1: see some crazy fluorescent things, but you're also going to
5:42
Speaker 1: see a lot of blue grayish coloring um and sea
5:47
Speaker 1: creatures because they'll blend into the light, that soft light
5:50
Speaker 1: under the water. And one of the reasons why animal
5:52
Speaker 1: camouflage is so widespread and adaptation is because it doesn't
5:56
Speaker 1: just help you from being hunted yourself. It helps you
6:01
Speaker 1: to hunt. You can use it to capture prey as
6:04
Speaker 1: well as hide from predators. So it's just really versatile
6:08
Speaker 1: and great fantastic stuff can help you kill and not
6:12
Speaker 1: be killed exactly, just the whole key. So Um, there's
6:16
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways where there's some factors involved
6:19
Speaker 1: in how animal camouflage will develop within a given species. Um.
6:25
Speaker 1: First and foremost, it depends on how the animal behaves,
6:29
Speaker 1: and it's physiology. Yeah, like, uh, if your mammal, obviously
6:34
Speaker 1: your fur is gonna play a large part. If you're
6:36
Speaker 1: a fish or an amphibian, your scales, your skin might write.
6:41
Speaker 1: If you're traveling big packs, you might use that to
6:44
Speaker 1: your advantage, or if you're a solo flyer, you might
6:46
Speaker 1: find a way to work that into your routine, your
6:49
Speaker 1: survival routine. Yeah, So I mean the animal itself, the camouflage,
6:53
Speaker 1: it develops what type of animal it is and how
6:57
Speaker 1: it behaves. Those are going to have a huge impact.
7:00
Speaker 1: So too will the environment. Probably more than anything else,
7:03
Speaker 1: the environment will um predict how the animals camouflage will develop,
7:08
Speaker 1: because what you want to do is blend into the background,
7:12
Speaker 1: and so the natural habitat, the environment that the animal
7:16
Speaker 1: lives in will become the model for the camouflage. Yeah. Like,
7:19
Speaker 1: if you're surrounded by green, you're probably gonna be green
7:23
Speaker 1: um or you might be dead soon. Uh. The other
7:27
Speaker 1: is the final way is the physiology and behavior of
7:29
Speaker 1: the predators and prey that seek those animals out for lunch. So,
7:33
Speaker 1: for instance, if the your main predator is color blind,
7:38
Speaker 1: then you're not gonna mess with changing color. You might
7:41
Speaker 1: alter over time, just like maybe the stripe pattern on
7:45
Speaker 1: your body, or it's about pattern not color necessarily. So
7:50
Speaker 1: the your own physiology and behavior, the behavior and I
7:54
Speaker 1: guess physiology of your predators or your prey, and then
7:58
Speaker 1: the actual environment that you and have it. These are
8:00
Speaker 1: the big three when it comes to determining animal camouflage. Yeah,
8:05
Speaker 1: and most of the camouflage that we see around us
8:09
Speaker 1: all balls under the banner. Of blending in to your
8:12
Speaker 1: surroundings just being casual. Um. And then there's basically two ways.
8:19
Speaker 1: Colors is huge, it's not the only thing, but it's
8:22
Speaker 1: one of the bigger points of animal camouflage. And then
8:25
Speaker 1: there's two ways that color is produced here on planet
8:29
Speaker 1: Earth by animals, and it's either chemically or physically. And chemically,
8:35
Speaker 1: colors are produced through pigments, that's right, biochromes their microscopic
8:40
Speaker 1: natural pigments, and they are they produce these colors chemically,
8:45
Speaker 1: and for instance, your chemical makeup might absorb some colors
8:48
Speaker 1: of light reflect others. That's gonna make you appear to
8:52
Speaker 1: be a different color or be a different color, right exactly. So, Like, um,
8:55
Speaker 1: I looked up human pigment, human pigmentation to see if
9:00
Speaker 1: that was an example of camouflage. Couldn't find anything. It
9:04
Speaker 1: wasn't like one of those ones where you do a
9:06
Speaker 1: Google searching you're like, oh, this is obviously a dumb question.
9:09
Speaker 1: This was like there just hasn't been a lot of
9:12
Speaker 1: academic study on it or whatever for humans. Yeah, like
9:15
Speaker 1: if brown skin or peach skin, yeah, interesting. I think
9:19
Speaker 1: what it is ultimately is just an adaptation to the
9:21
Speaker 1: exposure to the sun rather than trying to blend in
9:25
Speaker 1: with your environment. That makes sense, but I wondered I
9:28
Speaker 1: got my answer. I guess through the fact that there
9:30
Speaker 1: wasn't an answer, all right. The other way you mentioned
9:32
Speaker 1: was actually physical structures, and these are also microscopic and
9:38
Speaker 1: they act like prisms. And one example they gave in
9:42
Speaker 1: the article was polar bears, who actually have black skin,
9:46
Speaker 1: but they have translucent hairs, and the translucent hair turns
9:50
Speaker 1: all visible light into a rainbow, which is why polar
9:54
Speaker 1: bears look like rainbow colored. Well, I don't think that's true.
9:58
Speaker 1: It's like on the Pink Flood album cover. Yeah, that's
10:02
Speaker 1: a polar bear, right right, that's a polar bear hair
10:05
Speaker 1: that prism. Not true. No, but apparently they have black
10:09
Speaker 1: skin underneath, but their hair manages to bend and reflect
10:13
Speaker 1: all light, almost all lights, so they appear white and
10:16
Speaker 1: the nuts. But it's almost like, why why not just
10:21
Speaker 1: have the darker skin evolve out just because the hair
10:25
Speaker 1: made it so it didn't need to. Maybe I wonder
10:28
Speaker 1: if it serves some other purpose. Yeah, maybe this good
10:32
Speaker 1: question polar bear experts. Yeah, but just someone's gonna know,
10:35
Speaker 1: please let us know. Um, Butterflies also have um physical structures.
10:41
Speaker 1: Scales are also a physical structure because they do crazy
10:46
Speaker 1: things to light. And then some animals have both chemical
10:49
Speaker 1: and physical structures that create their camouflage. Apparently a lot
10:53
Speaker 1: of reptiles are green because they have physical structures that
10:57
Speaker 1: bend light and reflect light except up for say yellow.
11:02
Speaker 1: But then they have pigments underneath the skin that create
11:04
Speaker 1: blue or vice versa. Probably now that I say it
11:07
Speaker 1: out loud, and then you put the two together and
11:10
Speaker 1: you have green, which helps for a snake that lives
11:14
Speaker 1: in bright green trees. Yeah, and all of these um,
11:19
Speaker 1: all these animals have their own method I guess, and
11:23
Speaker 1: with their physiology, like obviously mammals have their fur um,
11:27
Speaker 1: fish um, amphibians, reptiles, they're gonna use their scales, birds
11:31
Speaker 1: have their feathers, and even insects use their exoskeleton um,
11:36
Speaker 1: which can actually like the texture of the exoskeleton can
11:40
Speaker 1: be changed over time to better blend in. Yeah, right,
11:43
Speaker 1: Like think about the the wings on grasshopper. They look
11:49
Speaker 1: a lot like a leaf, right, But one of the
11:51
Speaker 1: reasons they look like a leaf is not just because
11:53
Speaker 1: of the color, but because of the texture it's got
11:56
Speaker 1: kind of this math thing. If they were like a
11:57
Speaker 1: high shine polish, the thing would stand out pretty pretty clearly.
12:01
Speaker 1: So it's not just color. It's also texture as well
12:05
Speaker 1: and patterns as we'll see. But color is probably the
12:08
Speaker 1: most widespread part of animal camouflage. And apparently a squirrel,
12:14
Speaker 1: the squirrels fur is rough and uneven to resemble the
12:18
Speaker 1: texture of tree bark. Makes sense. Yeah, I never really
12:20
Speaker 1: noticed that I can spot a squirrel a mile away though.
12:23
Speaker 1: Well that's because there's like a zillion of them in
12:24
Speaker 1: Atlanta because I hate them. Woh, that's right. So we'll
12:28
Speaker 1: talk more about animal colors and all the neat stuff
12:32
Speaker 1: that can happen right after this message. All right, we're back,
12:44
Speaker 1: and we are talking about changing of the seasons now,
12:48
Speaker 1: because animals will change themselves depending on the change of
12:53
Speaker 1: the seasons. They can actually adapt to the seasons to
12:58
Speaker 1: blend in. Do you see how acutely fought are Look
13:00
Speaker 1: how cute that foxes? That's the same type of fox.
13:03
Speaker 1: I love foxes like. So, the Arctic fox lives in
13:07
Speaker 1: a u an environment, a habitat where some of the
13:11
Speaker 1: year it's snowy, other parts of the year it's um Well,
13:15
Speaker 1: woody and muddy. Yeah, and so as a result, the
13:18
Speaker 1: Arctic fox has evolved to change its coat depending on
13:22
Speaker 1: the season. Yeah, that's a sharp adaptation. It's pretty awesome.
13:25
Speaker 1: And it's actually triggered by hormones. The the animal senses
13:29
Speaker 1: the changing in the season because of like the shift
13:31
Speaker 1: in daylight, maybe shifts in temperature, and they'll release hormones
13:35
Speaker 1: and there'll be a reaction and all of a sudden,
13:38
Speaker 1: there are different biochromes being produced in that little fox
13:41
Speaker 1: can change color right there. They're making different pigments. Pigments.
13:44
Speaker 1: The thing is um and some bird species do this too,
13:48
Speaker 1: but well, not a lot of mammals, but some mammals
13:51
Speaker 1: will change their coat. The thing is that you can't
13:54
Speaker 1: or the fox or the bird can't do anything to
13:57
Speaker 1: change its actual coat. Once the oat has grown out,
14:01
Speaker 1: it has to shed its coat or malt its feathers
14:04
Speaker 1: and then regrow new ones that better match the new things.
14:07
Speaker 1: So that's why um. Apparently a lot of mammals malt
14:12
Speaker 1: is to change the color of their coat. Yeah, that's
14:15
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. It is pretty awesome. Have you ever seen
14:17
Speaker 1: the videos of the pet foxes on the internet. Yeah, man,
14:20
Speaker 1: they're very cute, little fluffy tails wagon and like those
14:24
Speaker 1: little chirpy noises they make when they get betted. Yes,
14:26
Speaker 1: that one in particular adorable. Uh and then chuck. Um.
14:30
Speaker 1: Have you heard about the peppered moth. I don't think
14:34
Speaker 1: so you have. It's the sterling example of natural selection
14:38
Speaker 1: in practice. But it's based on um camouflage. So in
14:42
Speaker 1: London during the Industrial Revolution that's London, England. Yes, okay,
14:47
Speaker 1: it became so sooty that um the white bodied peppered moth,
14:52
Speaker 1: which is exactly what it sounds like. It's kind of
14:55
Speaker 1: peppery looking. It looks like if it landed on the
14:57
Speaker 1: side of a birch tree, you know, the white ones,
15:01
Speaker 1: it would just blend right in because of this mixture
15:05
Speaker 1: of white and black. The thing is, is there so
15:08
Speaker 1: much soot produced during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution
15:11
Speaker 1: in London that this these moths that had any white
15:14
Speaker 1: to them would stand out like a sore thumb and
15:17
Speaker 1: we're predated eaten. Uh. There was a variation on this
15:23
Speaker 1: called the black bodied peppered moth didn't change because of
15:26
Speaker 1: the soot. So the thing is is the animal itself
15:29
Speaker 1: didn't change. Different varieties of the same species. One was eaten,
15:34
Speaker 1: one thrived because of the change in the amount of soot,
15:38
Speaker 1: but it happened very quickly. How do they know they
15:41
Speaker 1: just weren't white moss covered with soot. They're they're pretty
15:43
Speaker 1: sure they weren't. And then now that the soot has
15:47
Speaker 1: been whipped largely in London um, the white bodied pepper
15:53
Speaker 1: moth is now predominant again because it can blend in
15:57
Speaker 1: a lot more easily because there's less soot because London
15:59
Speaker 1: cleaned up act in some ways? What way says it not?
16:04
Speaker 1: I don't know. They like to drink a lot, they
16:08
Speaker 1: really they do. But don't they stop at like eleven? Now?
16:11
Speaker 1: I don't just remember we started drinking at four and
16:14
Speaker 1: then they drink for several hours, but then they stopped
16:16
Speaker 1: at eleven, like the bars aren't open all night or something. Yeah.
16:19
Speaker 1: The only time I went to London, I just remember thinking, man,
16:22
Speaker 1: they really do drink a lot. This is great. And
16:24
Speaker 1: I remember buying beer can beer in the store and
16:28
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, they've got its tall boys and
16:30
Speaker 1: they're like, what's the tall boy? Right, Like we just
16:32
Speaker 1: call that a beer that's a short Yeah, that you
16:35
Speaker 1: should see our tall boys. You call them kegs. I
16:38
Speaker 1: can't wait to go back. We're hoping, spoiler, We're hoping
16:41
Speaker 1: to maybe come to London for a show. Fingers crossed.
16:45
Speaker 1: All right, So where were we? Oh, we were talking
16:47
Speaker 1: about bio biochromes. Uh, those are the cells on this
16:51
Speaker 1: near to the skin surface, or in the case of
16:54
Speaker 1: the octopus or the cuttlefish, you can have deeper cells
16:57
Speaker 1: called chromatophors, which we talked about at length in the
17:00
Speaker 1: octopus episode, and those are amazing. Those are pigmented cells
17:04
Speaker 1: that the octopus and the cuttlefish can basically manipulate these
17:08
Speaker 1: cells and contract and expand these things, like the surface
17:13
Speaker 1: area can expand up to when they want to show
17:16
Speaker 1: that particular pigment. Yeah, and a good uh. I don't
17:19
Speaker 1: know if we had mentioned this and the last octopus one,
17:22
Speaker 1: but a good way to see this in action is
17:24
Speaker 1: to take like a balloon, like a red balloon, and
17:26
Speaker 1: just blow it up a little bit and tie it off.
17:28
Speaker 1: You know, if you squeeze that balloon, it's gonna change
17:31
Speaker 1: its color, it's gonna become lighter. And then when you
17:34
Speaker 1: unsqueeze it or let it go, it's gonna go back
17:36
Speaker 1: to that dark red. And that's kind of the same
17:38
Speaker 1: thing that's going on with the manipulation of the caromatophor, right,
17:41
Speaker 1: And that's different shades of it's of the same color,
17:44
Speaker 1: but they have different camatophores of totally different colors and
17:47
Speaker 1: then call up what they want, right. Yeah, So if
17:49
Speaker 1: they want like all black, they could reduce the size
17:52
Speaker 1: of everything but black and just show the black. But
17:55
Speaker 1: they can also mix and match to create colors that
17:58
Speaker 1: are basically a bland and of their different colored chromatophores.
18:02
Speaker 1: So if they are blue and yellow and they're showing
18:04
Speaker 1: those equally, they'll have a nice healthy shade of green overall.
18:08
Speaker 1: And with cuttle fish in particular, they've done some recent
18:11
Speaker 1: study and they found that not only do they have chromatophores,
18:15
Speaker 1: they have two other structures that help too. They have lucophors,
18:18
Speaker 1: which scatter light very efficiently. Then they also have aritophores,
18:22
Speaker 1: which produce iridescence. So that's why it's not just like
18:25
Speaker 1: a flat color change. It's like these are it's like magic.
18:28
Speaker 1: When you see an octopus quick change color or cuttle fish, Yeah,
18:34
Speaker 1: it looks like they it looks like it's just become
18:37
Speaker 1: a completely different animal, not just colorwise, but texture and
18:40
Speaker 1: all that is all just optical illusions. Yeah, the the
18:43
Speaker 1: octopus can shape texture and color. And a second, it's
18:46
Speaker 1: not like I mean, if you've seen the video, it's
18:48
Speaker 1: not the kind of thing that's like, oh it's changing now.
18:51
Speaker 1: I mean you blink your eyes and it's a underwater plant. Exactly.
18:55
Speaker 1: What's nuts, though, Chuck, is they've studied the cuttle fish
18:59
Speaker 1: and it's just color they're changing. Maniac cuttle fish are
19:03
Speaker 1: color blind. They have no idea. They know that it's
19:07
Speaker 1: visually driven because they've deprived it of visual cues before
19:10
Speaker 1: and shown that it's not quite as adept at changing
19:13
Speaker 1: its colors, so they know that it's it's visually driven,
19:17
Speaker 1: but they have no idea how a cuttle fish can
19:19
Speaker 1: tell what color to change too, because it's color blind.
19:23
Speaker 1: Isn't that cool? Well? Maybe I don't know. There's no
19:25
Speaker 1: mirrors down there. Maybe they don't even know what color is.
19:29
Speaker 1: Maybe not. Maybe it's all some other sense that we've
19:32
Speaker 1: yet to discover. Yeah, the cuddle sense cuddle, Um, I
19:37
Speaker 1: guess we can. I know we mentioned this in another
19:39
Speaker 1: one about the chameleon that may have been or is
19:42
Speaker 1: that it don't be dumb episode that chameleons don't change
19:45
Speaker 1: their color to blend in. They actually change color depending
19:48
Speaker 1: on their mood. I've not done that one. I heard that,
19:51
Speaker 1: I think for the first time a couple of years ago.
19:53
Speaker 1: I had always thought, like a lot of people, that
19:55
Speaker 1: the chameleon, you know, lands on something green, it's gonna
19:57
Speaker 1: turn green. As far as any paink commercial I've ever
19:59
Speaker 1: seen for through chameleon, that's the story, you know. Yeah,
20:02
Speaker 1: But they, like I said, they change when their mood changes. Um,
20:05
Speaker 1: and not necessarily depending on their surroundings. Right, so they're
20:09
Speaker 1: basically showing like I'm happy, I'm fluorescent orange. Right now,
20:13
Speaker 1: let's go uh, let's go to happy hour. Um. So,
20:17
Speaker 1: so far, we've got hormonal changes to either changes in
20:21
Speaker 1: temperature or changes in sunlight leading to molting or shedding
20:26
Speaker 1: a fur in a new coat. Um, you've got some
20:30
Speaker 1: sort of visually driven behavior in some pretty amazing animals
20:35
Speaker 1: like the octopus or the cuttlefish. Um, you've got chameleons
20:40
Speaker 1: changing based on their mood, which again I guess would
20:43
Speaker 1: probably be hormonally triggered. And then you've also got some
20:47
Speaker 1: that changed their color their camouflage based on diet, like
20:51
Speaker 1: the nudy branch, or as I like to call it,
20:53
Speaker 1: the nudy brand, the nuty branch. Did you look at these? No? Amazing.
20:58
Speaker 1: It's one of those like super brilliant, fluorescent, very colorful things. Um.
21:05
Speaker 1: And they are sea creatures and they alter their diet
21:08
Speaker 1: depending on what kind of coral um they are near.
21:10
Speaker 1: They will eat that coral and deposit that pigmentum from
21:14
Speaker 1: the coral into their skin and their intestines, and it'll
21:18
Speaker 1: just change the color to blend in with what they're eating. Basically, yeah,
21:21
Speaker 1: because what they're eating is also what they're living on.
21:24
Speaker 1: So when they eat a specific type of coral and
21:27
Speaker 1: that changes their color, they blend in with their surroundings.
21:31
Speaker 1: Pretty ingenious, smart nudy branches. Way to go. There are
21:35
Speaker 1: also fish who change color without changing their diet um,
21:40
Speaker 1: and that is sort of like the malting and mammals
21:43
Speaker 1: and birds the fish and this this is something that
21:46
Speaker 1: happens over time. It's not like I'll eat and change colors.
21:49
Speaker 1: But if the fish changes environment as a species, it's
21:52
Speaker 1: going to get new queues and look around and say, well,
21:55
Speaker 1: I might want to think about turning a little more
21:57
Speaker 1: green over time as a specie, and I want to
22:01
Speaker 1: think about that. So I'm gonna release some hormones and
22:04
Speaker 1: maybe over time, my my sons and my son's sons
22:08
Speaker 1: might eventually really blend in well. And oh grab when
22:11
Speaker 1: it comes to shark yah hide exactly have you heard
22:14
Speaker 1: of the glass frog? Uh, it's neat. It's translucent, so
22:18
Speaker 1: you can see its internal organs very clearly. Um. But
22:22
Speaker 1: I was like, what what adaptation is that? Seriously, like,
22:25
Speaker 1: how does that figure with with animal camouflage? And um, no,
22:30
Speaker 1: one's sure, there's no definitive answer, but it seems like
22:33
Speaker 1: the best theory I saw was that, Um, it's translucent
22:36
Speaker 1: skin makes it invisible. Oh really, uh huh, which makes
22:40
Speaker 1: sense because it's guts are green and I think it's
22:43
Speaker 1: a tree frog, so it's it's invisible, I guess to
22:46
Speaker 1: some predators, or maybe it just wants to be a
22:49
Speaker 1: part of the body's exhibit really badly. It looks like
22:52
Speaker 1: that it's the frog version of the invisible man man.
22:55
Speaker 1: I'll have to check that out. So we'll talk more
22:57
Speaker 1: about some other uses for camouflage. Right after this, we
23:11
Speaker 1: talked about coloration and stuff, like that, but they're also designs.
23:15
Speaker 1: Um the animals can use to blend in, and that
23:19
Speaker 1: is the model pattern that they're using. Like let's say
23:23
Speaker 1: a zebra stripes. They have those vertical stripes. Yeah, and
23:27
Speaker 1: it's black and white. And if you go on a safari,
23:31
Speaker 1: probably the first thing you would ever notice is a
23:33
Speaker 1: zebra sticks out like a sore thumb. Look like crazy,
23:37
Speaker 1: we're looking horse that can never be domesticated because they're
23:41
Speaker 1: too wild and too met Um. The thing is, the
23:44
Speaker 1: zebra is not camouflaged for you. It doesn't care about
23:48
Speaker 1: you or your family. It cares about the lions that's
23:52
Speaker 1: funding it. And lions are color blind, so they can't
23:55
Speaker 1: see that a zebras black and white and the leaves
23:58
Speaker 1: and grass that's blending in with our own and khaki
24:00
Speaker 1: and greens, or it just sees the pattern, which is
24:04
Speaker 1: the whole point. Yeah. And then the other cool thing
24:06
Speaker 1: about zebra stripes is they are specific to the zebra.
24:10
Speaker 1: It's like a fingerprint, so they help them identify each
24:13
Speaker 1: other or maybe the pack like, oh, look at that pack,
24:17
Speaker 1: that's not my pack because those stripes are not my stripes, right,
24:20
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting? Or this is uh king seraphon king
24:26
Speaker 1: of the zebras, and I can tell it's him because
24:30
Speaker 1: of his stripes. And by the way, I when I
24:31
Speaker 1: say pack, I mean heard, heard, You're right to save
24:34
Speaker 1: your emails. Well, what's neat is so zebras do work
24:38
Speaker 1: in herds or live in herds, and they use stripes
24:41
Speaker 1: to identify one another, like a mom will be able
24:45
Speaker 1: to keep an eye on her kid. Chure full um
24:48
Speaker 1: from a ways off, because to a zebra, it's plainly
24:51
Speaker 1: obvious that that's our kid. It doesn't look like anything
24:54
Speaker 1: else to us, you know, it looks exactly the same. Um.
24:57
Speaker 1: But another another adaptive measure of the animal camouflage of
25:04
Speaker 1: zebras is that since they do exist in herds, it
25:09
Speaker 1: makes it really hard for a lion to pick out
25:11
Speaker 1: what the heck is going on when you've got a
25:14
Speaker 1: herd of zebras, because their stripes are running into each
25:16
Speaker 1: other and you can't tell which zebras ends where, begins where,
25:23
Speaker 1: and uh, it makes it harder for them to pick
25:25
Speaker 1: out like the weak and the injured. Yeah, and that's
25:27
Speaker 1: the same truth a lot of stripe fish. Um. A
25:30
Speaker 1: shark might just see a big blob of stripy things
25:34
Speaker 1: and not realize. And that's why it's you know, they
25:35
Speaker 1: travel in schools, not the only reason, but to help
25:38
Speaker 1: themselves look larger and just sort of blend in as
25:41
Speaker 1: a big gelatinous stripe e fluorescent thing exactly because they're
25:44
Speaker 1: kind of like, well, there's no way that a shark's
25:47
Speaker 1: not going to see the school of fish, or there's
25:48
Speaker 1: no way a lion is not gonna see this herd
25:50
Speaker 1: of zebras. But we can make it really difficult for
25:53
Speaker 1: this predator to create a good attack strategy because this
25:57
Speaker 1: is very confusing, that's right, And that's called disruptive coloration.
26:01
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat um trick that they use. Another thing
26:05
Speaker 1: they can use is what they call visual disruption. Visual Yeah,
26:10
Speaker 1: I see that, funny. That's typically how it's pronounced. It
26:13
Speaker 1: sounded weird coming out of my mess. Yeah. Uh. This
26:16
Speaker 1: is when patterns are out of line with the body's contours,
26:20
Speaker 1: so it looks like, um, someone has thrown some sort
26:24
Speaker 1: of projection, uh, superimposed on top of that animal, right,
26:28
Speaker 1: or it looks like it really just blends in with
26:31
Speaker 1: the the grasses or whatever that it's walking along, rather
26:35
Speaker 1: than if it did follow the contours would be like, oh, well,
26:37
Speaker 1: look at that zebra right there standing in the grass,
26:40
Speaker 1: right exactly. Another cool thing that animals can do is
26:45
Speaker 1: imitation or mimicry. And this is when they say, you
26:49
Speaker 1: know what, I I can't manage being ignored. I'm not
26:53
Speaker 1: that good, but at least I can um be seen.
26:58
Speaker 1: I can't manage to not be seen because I'm not
27:00
Speaker 1: that good. But maybe I can manage to be ignored. Yeah, Like,
27:04
Speaker 1: I'm a walking stick insect. And they're so cool because
27:08
Speaker 1: they look so much like twigs and sticks, and that's
27:12
Speaker 1: what they're trying to do. They're like, well, I know
27:13
Speaker 1: you see me, but hopefully you just think I'm a stick.
27:16
Speaker 1: It's funny. It looks like a stick with the head
27:18
Speaker 1: of a beaker from the Muppets. Yeah. Um, the Katie
27:22
Speaker 1: did is another one. You ever seen those? They look
27:24
Speaker 1: like leaves? Yeah, like really green leaves. Yeah. Um? Did
27:28
Speaker 1: you see the hawk moth caterpillar? Yeah, that's one of
27:31
Speaker 1: my favorites. It is awesome. I was like, what do
27:34
Speaker 1: you mean it looks like a snake? Come on, And
27:36
Speaker 1: then I did a Google image search. Yeah, it looks
27:39
Speaker 1: exactly like a snake. Like I would be freaked out
27:43
Speaker 1: thinking it was a snake and I'm a smart human. Yeah,
27:45
Speaker 1: there's certain photos I've seen. I think maybe the one
27:48
Speaker 1: you found where it compares a snake to this thing. No,
27:52
Speaker 1: I didn't see one compared. It was just on its face. Yeah,
27:55
Speaker 1: team of facey pretty amazing. Yeah, and that is the
27:58
Speaker 1: hawk moth caterpillar or our favorite moth caterpillar. Oh. Another
28:03
Speaker 1: thing that they can do sometimes if they live in
28:05
Speaker 1: an ecosystem where UM a lot of times, like super
28:09
Speaker 1: poisonous animals are really brightly colored, the non poisonous animals
28:13
Speaker 1: will be like, you know what, everyone's ignoring that guy
28:15
Speaker 1: because if they eat it, he will die. So over time,
28:19
Speaker 1: let's ourselves evolved to have bright colors even though we're
28:21
Speaker 1: not poisonous, so we can look like that dude that
28:24
Speaker 1: is poisonous. False flag camouflage brilliant, brilliant color mimicry. So, chuck,
28:33
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing else. That was
28:35
Speaker 1: animal camouflage. One of our great UM animal episodes. Those
28:40
Speaker 1: are always fun. They made me feel like a kid. Yeah,
28:43
Speaker 1: I mean, I agreed. You know, Uh, if you want
28:46
Speaker 1: to learn more about animal camouflage, you should type those
28:49
Speaker 1: words into the search bar, how stuff works dot com.
28:52
Speaker 1: Don't forget the you. And since I said that, it's
28:55
Speaker 1: time for listener mail Greetings from Connecticut. That's what I'll
29:01
Speaker 1: call this, because Christina lives in Connecticut, or as I
29:05
Speaker 1: like to say, Connecticut, and so I'll remember how to
29:09
Speaker 1: spell it. Why does that see in there? It's sort
29:12
Speaker 1: of weird. M. I don't know. Yeah. I want to
29:15
Speaker 1: thank you guys for your podcasts on bipolar disorder. I've
29:17
Speaker 1: struggled with this since I was first diagnosed at eighteen
29:21
Speaker 1: with bipolar two. I always said I got the short
29:23
Speaker 1: into the stick and disorders, as I suffer from only
29:26
Speaker 1: small bouts of highs and long bouts of loads. Most recently,
29:31
Speaker 1: I suffered a nervous breakdown due distress from work. I'm
29:34
Speaker 1: currently on medical lead from work. My bipolar has progressed
29:37
Speaker 1: to hallucinations, which are not fun. I see something that
29:41
Speaker 1: my mind is trying to tell myself isn't really there,
29:44
Speaker 1: but the anxiety and fear that uh, it's really there
29:47
Speaker 1: overcomes me. My family's old school and chooses to ignore it.
29:52
Speaker 1: Old school. That's one way to say that, um, and
29:55
Speaker 1: act like it isn't happening. UM. I should also add
29:58
Speaker 1: but I come from a family of medical professionals and therapists. Wow,
30:02
Speaker 1: that doesn't make sense. No, that's very surprised. They're like, absolutely, honey,
30:06
Speaker 1: there's a clown with a knife coming at you. For sure.
30:09
Speaker 1: That doesn't seem like a good strategy. No, not at all.
30:12
Speaker 1: I set your podcast to my family, though, and it
30:14
Speaker 1: allowed us to have an open conversation about what is
30:17
Speaker 1: going on. I'm a little alarmed that her medical professional
30:20
Speaker 1: families needed our show, right, But we saved the day, though,
30:23
Speaker 1: so we did. Your podcast truly is a wonderful tool
30:26
Speaker 1: for anyone that wants to explain to someone what we
30:28
Speaker 1: struggle with on a day to day basis. You guys
30:30
Speaker 1: are great and often keep me company while I paint
30:32
Speaker 1: during my hypomanic episodes. So she is eternally grateful, and
30:37
Speaker 1: that is Christina and Christina, I wrote you back, but
30:39
Speaker 1: hanging there of your family's more understanding now and I'm
30:42
Speaker 1: glad we could help. Yeah, for real. Thank you very
30:44
Speaker 1: much for letting us know about that, Christina, We appreciate it. Um.
30:48
Speaker 1: If we have helped you through a tough time or
30:50
Speaker 1: fostered conversation that panned out, well, just the ones that
30:54
Speaker 1: panned out, Well, we want to hear about those. Yeah,
30:57
Speaker 1: I don't want to hear if you've got in a
30:58
Speaker 1: fist fight because it's something we said. No, it's not
31:01
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31:05
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31:08
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