Concealing-coloration in the animal kingdom; an exposition of the laws of disguise through color and pattern: being a summary of Abbott H. Thayer's discoveries

Abstract

PROTECTIVE COLORATION with its achievement of the wonderful inconspicuousness of many wild animals in their native haunts has been recognized since the earliest days of Natural History study. But the true character of this phenomenon has been ignored or misinterpreted and the phenomenon itself has been observed only in one small corner of its wide field of action. It has waited for an artist in the last years of the nineteenth century not only to recognize the basic working laws of protective coloration but to perceive that the many animals of supposed conspicuous attire are almost all colored and marked in the way most potent to conceal them...