Camouflage

www.readinga-z.com

Written by Kira Freed

CamouflageA Reading A–Z Level T Leveled Reader

Word Count: 1,855

LLEEVVEELLEEDD RREEAADDEERR •• TT

Camouflage

Visit www.readinga-z.com for thousands of books and materials.

CamouflageLevel T Leveled Reader© 2002 Learning Page, Inc.Written by Kira Freed

ReadingA–ZTM

© Learning Page, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Learning Page1630 E. River Road #121Tucson, AZ 85718

www.readinga-z.com

Camouflage

www.readinga-z.com

Written by Kira Freed

Photo Credits:Cover, back cover, title page, pages 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14,15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26: © www.arttoday.com;page 8: White Sands National Monument/U.S. National Park Service;page 19: Jeff J. Daly/Visuals Unlimited.

CorrelationLEVEL T

Fountas & Pinnell PReading Recovery 23

DRA 38

43

Table of Contents

Introduction .........................................................4

Blending or Concealing Coloration..................6

Seasonal Blending ...............................................9

Color Change .....................................................11

Camouflage in Young Animals .......................13

Disguise ..............................................................16

Trickery ...............................................................17

Disruptive Coloration.......................................20

Flash Coloration and Other Surprises ...........21

Warning Coloration ..........................................22

How Did Camouflage Develop? ....................24

Summary ............................................................26

Try This ...............................................................27

Glossary ..............................................................28

Introduction

Most animals have enemies. In order to survive, they have to defend themselves.Some animals use speed and strength tosurvive. Others, like alligators, use theirpowerful jaws and sharp teeth. Some, likerattlesnakes and black widow spiders, usevenom. Others, such as turtles, have hardbody coverings. But other animals must rely on the color and pattern of their bodycovering for survival.

Chameleon

65

Blending or Concealing Coloration

Have you heard the joke about the studentwho turned in a blank sheet of white paperfor his art project? His teacher asked him how he could call that art. “It’s not a blanksheet of white paper,” he replied. “It’s a polarbear in a snowstorm.” The polar bear is anexample of blending coloration—its white furblends in well with its snowy surroundings.This gives the polar bear an advantage whenhunting. It is less visible and can sneak up on seals, walruses, and other animals that it hunts.

Camouflage comes in many forms. Some animals have permanent color patternsthat help them to hide. Others have colorpatterns that change with the seasons. Stillothers have color patterns that change withthe surface the animal is on. And still othersuse patterns that change during differentstages of life. Let’s take a look at differentforms of camouflage.

Do You Know?A polar bear can swim up to60 miles without resting.

The use of coloring and patterns todisguise and conceal is called camouflage.Many kinds of animals use camouflage inorder to survive. Predators—animals thathunt—use it to sneak up on their preywithout being seen. Prey use it to hide from predators.

The snake’s patterns and color can help it hide.

Polar bears blend in with their surroundings.

A special kind of blending can happenwhen one kind of animal is found living inmany different places. Let’s look at earlesslizards as an example. Earless lizards livingon the white sands of New Mexico are white.Other earless lizards that live nearby on blackvolcanic rock are almost black. Still otherearless lizards in nearby desert areas are light yellow to blend well with sand.

87

Blending coloration is quite common innature. Many desert creatures, includingsnakes, lizards, and desert foxes, are the colorof sand to match their surroundings. Manyinsects are green to blend in with the plantsthey live and feed on. Lions match the colorof the dry grasslands of the African plainswhere they live. Other big cats with colorpatterns, such as leopards, cheetahs, andtigers, blend in with the light and dark oftheir woodland homes.

This snake’s color blends with the rocks.

Earlesslizards

109

Arctic birds such as ptarmigans (TAR-mi-gans) and snowy owls also changecolor with the seasons. Ptarmigans start togrow speckled brown summer coats in thespring. The males stay white longer so thatthey’re more visible to predators. While thepredators are busy chasing the more visiblemale, the female hides in her nest and warms her newly laid eggs.

Seasonal Blending

Many animals have fur or skin that blendsin with their environment. But what do youdo when the color of your environmentchanges? Some animals that live in colderclimates change color with the seasons. Arctic hares and Arctic foxes in the far northhave brown fur in the summer and white furin the winter. This helps them to hide yearround. If the land around them is white,they’re white. If it’s dark, they’re dark, too.

Arctic foxes change color.

Ptarmigans in summer and winter

Color Change

Perhaps one of the best-known examplesof color change is the chameleon. Manypeople believe that chameleons change colorto hide. But most chameleons change color to display emotions to other chameleons.However, because many chameleons happento be green, brown, or gray, they are wellhidden in nature.

1211

Do You Know?Chameleons have the widest range of color ofall the color-changing animals. They changecolor when they are hot, cold, frightened,angry, or in love.

Crab spiders change color, too. They are able to match the color of white, pink, or yellow flowers. They sit on flowers and are almost invisible until an unsuspectingbeetle, fly, or bee comes by for a sip of nectar. The crab spider then attacks it.

The octopus is also known for its ability to change color. It can change both the colorand texture of its skin. When an octopusmoves onto a rock, it changes color to matchthe rock. Its skin becomes bumpy to matchthe rock’s surface.

Chameleons can change color.

The octopus blends in with its surroundings.

1413

Camouflage in Young Animals

Some animals have camouflage patternswhen they are young, but lose these patternswhen they grow big and strong enough tooutrun their enemies. When young, theirparents must leave them alone for periods of time to go find food. If the young arecamouflaged, they are less likely to be eatenby a predator while their parents are away.

Camouflage patterns are well known in baby deer. Similar light-colored spottingalso occurs in the young of tapirs (a hoofedmammal) and wild boars. Topi antelopes of the African desert blend in with the sandwhile they are young. When they grow strong enough to flee their enemies, theydevelop black markings. Even some youngpredatory animals use camouflage to hide.Lion cubs have spots that help them blend in.

This white weasel blends in with the snow.Young deer have spots to help them blend in with the leaves.

Disguise

Disguise is another kind of camouflage. A disguised animal looks like another animalor object. Some of the best masters of disguiseare leaf insects and stick insects. A leaf insecthas wings that look exactly like leaves. Stickinsects look so much like sticks that it’salmost impossible to tell the insect from the stick that it rests on.

Some insects are the shape and color of flowers. Tropical mantids, of which thepraying mantis is one, have bodies that lookjust like orchids. They are always ready togobble up an insect that thinks it’s about toget a taste of nectar.

Some animals are even camouflaged before birth. Many animals are at risk ofbeing eaten when they are in the egg stage.Birds that nest on the ground are at great riskfor having their eggs stolen when they leavethe nest. Oystercatcher eggs are the color ofpebbles along the beaches where they live.The eggs of other ground-nesting birds have streaks and blotches to break up theegg-shaped outline to help them blend with their surroundings.

1615

Speckled eggs blend in well with the rocks.

Many insects look like plant parts.

Trickery

While disguise involves the visible features of an animal, trickery involvesbehavior. Some animals try to trick or foolother animals by pretending they are dead or by using some other trick.

When frightened, some chameleons lie onthe ground without moving. This behaviorcauses the chameleon to look like a piece ofdead wood. Many kinds of small beetles playdead when they are disturbed. They fall tothe ground and look like grains of soil,fooling birds who might otherwise eat them.

1817

Many predator animals will not eat ananimal that is already dead. They prefer to eatonly fresh meat. So many prey animals playdead to avoid being eaten. When threatened,a hognose snake turns upside-down andthrows back its head, holding its mouth open.It pretends to be dead and tricks its predatorinto leaving it alone.

Chameleon A hognose snake playing dead

Disruptive Coloration

Another kind of camouflage is calleddisruptive coloration. This kind ofcamouflage helps to break up an animal’soutline and hide its true shape. The stripes of tigers and zebras are two examples of thiskind of camouflage. Two African antelopesalso have stripes that help break up theiroutlines. The stripes of all these animals blend in with shadows and make the animalsless visible.

Fireflies are experts at a very clever kind of trickery. When a firefly wants to mate, itflashes its light. Each species of firefly flashesits own kind of signal pattern. Sometimes thefemale of one species will imitate the signal of another species to trick the males of thatspecies. She flashes the signal of the otherspecies, and when a male arrives, she eats him.

2019

Fireflies use light to attract mates.

Zebras have disruptive coloration.

2221

Warning Coloration

Other animals have bright coloring towarn other animals that they taste bad or are poisonous. The bright colors remindpredators of the bad experience they had thelast time they tried to eat one of these yuckyanimals. Fish, frogs, snakes, and many kindsof insects use warning coloration.

A few animals survive simply because they look like some other bad tasting orpoisonous animal. They disguise themselvesusing the same colors, just to keep predatorsaway. Some flies and moths survive becausethey have black and yellow body stripes likestinging wasps and bees. Some also make a buzzing sound like a bee.

Flash Coloration and Other Surprises

Until now, we’ve been talking about howanimals use color and behavior patterns to be less visible. But some animals survive by being more visible. Some animals escapepredators by startling them. Some do it bymaking a sudden noise or by baring theirteeth. Others startle by flashing a bright colorat the predator. This is called flash coloration.

A related kind of camouflage involveseyespots. Some moths have spots on theirwings that look like the eyes of large animals.When the moth flashes its eyespots, this canstartle a predator and give the moth an extrasecond or two to fly away before being eaten.

Io moth with eyespots

Poisonous frog

How Did Camouflage Develop?

From one generation of living things to the next, little changes happen in physicaltraits such as colors and patterns. Sometimeswhen animals have babies, some of the babiesare born with features that give them anadvantage toward survival. The differencemay give this new animal an advantage. For example, it may be faster or have a color or pattern to better blend with itssurroundings. With such an advantage, thisanimal is more likely to survive to produce its own babies. These babies are likely to also have the same trait and will be morelikely to survive.

A famous example of warning coloration is the monarch butterfly, which is brightorange and black. Monarchs taste so bad that a bird will often vomit after eating one. But the viceroy doesn’t taste bad. However, it has developed similar markings to look like the monarch. It is more likely to be leftalone by predators since it looks like the foul-tasting monarch.

2423

Viceroy (right)

Monarch(below)

Camouflaged eggs

Conclusion

Only a few animals have no need forcamouflage. These animals may have nonatural enemies and eat plant food thatcannot escape. The only threat to theseanimals comes from humans. Land animalssuch as elephants, rhinoceroses, andhippopotamuses do not need to camouflagethemselves from natural enemies. In theocean, only certain huge whales that eatplankton have no need of camouflage. For other animals, camouflage plays animportant role in the struggle to stay alive.

2625

An animal whose camouflage does notwork well will be eaten by a predator. Only animals with the best traits survive to produce offspring. Those offspring tend to have the same traits as their parents. In this way, the successful camouflage ispassed on from one generation to the next.

This process works for predators as well.Predators with the best traits will be the ones that have regular meals, stay strong, and are more likely to survive and reproduce.Their traits then get passed on to theiroffspring, who in turn are also more likely to survive and reproduce. Over thousands of years, weak and less protected animalsfailed to survive. This has allowed animalswith the best traits for survival to live on and reproduce.

Polar bear

The rhinoceros does not need camouflage.

Glossary

blending camouflage that helps an animalcoloration blend in with its background (p. 6)

blotches dark patches or stains (p. 15)

conceal hide (p. 5)

disguise to pretend to be something different by changing appearances (p. 5)

disruptive chunky patterns such as blotches or coloration spots that help break up the outline of

an animal (p. 20)

eyespots spots that look like the eyes of a muchlarger animal (p. 21)

flash sudden, startling color that helps ancoloration animal escape (p. 21)

offspring descendants (p. 25)

predators animals that hunt and prey on (eat)other animals (p. 5)

prey an animal that is eaten by anotheranimal (p. 5)

startle suddenly scare (p. 21)

warning colors that tell other animals that ancoloration animal tastes bad or is poisonous (p. 22)

2827

TRY THIS!Wear neutral-colored clothing for aday. Notice how many people payattention to you as you do normalactivities such as going to school orgoing to a store. On another day,wear bright red clothing and dosimilar activities. Notice if you getmore attention when you wear brightcolors.

TRY THIS!Go out into nature with afamily member. Wear clothingthat is only shades of green orbrown. Stand in the middle ofa wooded area and see if yourcompanion can see you from20 paces away. Now put on a brightly colored T-shirt you’vebrought with you. Stand thesame distance away and see if your companion sees you.