As animals evolved, most of them developed body colors and markings that improved their chances of surviving. This adaptive mechanism, known as protective coloration, may serve any number of functions.
Coloring can help protect an animal by making it hard to see.
For an animal that spends much of its life trying to avoid dangerous enemies, this is the most useful function. A white snow hare, for example, blends into its white surroundings and so becomes less visible to predators. In general, the purpose of protective coloration is to decrease an organism's visibility or to alter its appearance to other organisms. Sometimes several forms of protective coloration are superimposed on one animal. There are a variety of protective coloration schemes.