Evolutionary Camouflage

Cephalopods are part of the mollusc class which includes octopi, squid, nautilus and cuttlefish (Hanlon et al., 2009). In this blog post I will be discussing cuttlefish, octopi and squid, as they are the masters of camouflage. Please note, to make this article read fluidly I will group them as cephalopods, but be mindful I am not referring to nautilus. Pictures of the same cuttlefish seconds apart For this blog I wanted to find out if cephalopods use background matching or colour disruptive camouflage. As you may remember I discussed  background matching a few weeks ago. If you don’t remember or can’t be bothered going back and reading, I’ll just tell you that background matching is when the organism’s colouring matches its background (Caro, 2005). Disruptive colouration (which I also discussed a couple of weeks ago) is the use of contrasting markings of an organism to break up the body edge and to confuse prey or predator ( Skelhorn & Rowe, 2016) . To answer...

While background matching and disruptive colouration can seem similar in aspects, they differ in one fundamental way. Background matching is ideal for one specific area (or background), however disruptive colouration can suit many environments and poses to confuse (Cuthill & Szekely, 2009). The red-necked nightjar ( Caprimulgus ru fi collis ) are birds that lay their eggs on the bare ground (Saez-Gomez et al., 2018). This is a very dangerous behaviour for these birds as there are many ground dwelling predators about, like the Iberian lynx ( Lynx pardinus ) (Saez-Gomez et al., 2018) . To protect themselves against these hazards t hey have developed incredible disruptive colouration. The contrasting colouration of their feathers interacts with their background and often blurs their outline. It camouflages the red-necked nightjar so it is able to sit on it’s nest long enough to produce offspring. If the nightjar’s disruptive colouration is good enough it will avoid predators an...