By Moira Whitehouse PhD

Unlike your pet, wild animals need to protect themselves from many threats, like:

Unlike your pet, wild animals need to protect themselves from many threats, like: predators

Unlike your pet, wild animals need to protect themselves from many threats, like: animals that want to fight with them

Unlike your pet, wild animals need to protect themselves from many threats, like: weather

Unlike your pet, wild animals need to protect themselves from many threats, like: drought, flooding, freezing etc.

Animals have a natural instinct to survive so they try to protect themselves from predators.

Their many tools to help them do this include:

Camouflage
Body structure including covering poisons Protective behavior

CamouflageAn animals natural coloring or form that 1)provides protection from predators by blending in with surroundings through color or pattern. 2)can also help predators get close enough to unsuspecting prey to catch them.

SEASONAL CAMOUFLAGE
These two pictures could be of the same bird at two different times of the year. The Alaskan Ptarmigan changes color to white during the snowy winter months and to brown in the summer so that it blends in with its surroundings.

U S Fish and Wildlife

This weasel gives us another example of an animal changing the color of its fur for the seasons of the year. This is his summer coat.

U S Fish and Wildlife

This could be the same animal with his winter coat on. Weasels sometimes live in rocky areas where there is snow and having white fur allows them to blend in. This helps protect themselves from predators and also helps them get in close to prey before being seen.

Bill Schmoker <bill.schmoker@gmail.com>

Here we have a Arctic hare wearing summer and winter coats. Can you think of any problem with the hare keeping the dark coat for the winter months?
The fox would probably like for the rabbit to stay white in the summer. Why?
U S Fish and Wildlife

Wikipedia Commons

Most camouflage, however, isnt concerned with just changing to white in the winter. Many animals are regularly able to hide in their environment because their body covering blends in with both the color and patterns of their surroundings.

NONSEASONAL CAMOUFLAGE
This camouflaged toad is a bit safer because he is hard to find by those who would eat him. Not only is he the color of his surroundings but the pattern of his body is also similar to the bark of this tree. A small shrimp hides among the stinging tentacles of a sea anemone. Can you see it?

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com

Take a close look. This isnt a small leaf on a larger one. The small leaf is actually an insect that looks almost exactly like a leaf. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LeafInsect.jpg

This frog would be pretty hard for a predator to pick out from the leaves on which it is perched.