page_title: Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom
section_title: Outline
hierarchical_section_title: Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom / Outline
caption_attribution_description: English: Figure 7, 'White fowl lacking counter-shading' from Thayer 1909. Thayer argued in the book that almost all animal coloration was for camouflage, principally via countershading.
context_page_description: 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 is a book published ostensibly by Gerald H. Thayer in 1909, and revised in 1918, but in fact a collaboration with and completion of his father Abbott Handerson Thayer's major work.
  The book, illustrated artistically by Abbott Thayer, sets out the controversial thesis that all animal coloration has the evolutionary purpose of camouflage. Thayer rejected Charles Darwin's theory of sexual selection, arguing in words and paintings that even such conspicuous animal features as the peacock's tail or the brilliant pink of flamingoes or roseate spoonbills were effective as camouflage in the right light.
  The book introduced the concepts of disruptive coloration to break up an object's outlines, of masquerade, as when a butterfly mimics a leaf, and especially of countershading, where an animal's tones make it appear flat by concealing its self-shadowing.
  The book was criticised by big game hunter and politician Theodore Roosevelt for its central assertion that every aspect of animal coloration is effective as camouflage.
context_section_description: Chapter 1 sets out the "long-ignored laws" of "protective coloration", an act which "has waited for an artist" to perceive. Thayer explains the principle of countershading with a diagram, arguing that a naive view of being "colored like their surroundings" does not explain how animal camouflage works. He acknowledges the prior work of Edward Bagnall Poulton (The Colours of Animals, 1890) in identifying countershading in caterpillars, quoting some passages where Poulton describes how larvae and pupae can appear flat. Countershading is named as "the law which underlies protective coloration", rather than as one of several principles.
  Chapter 2 defines the book's terms, equating "mimicry" with "protective resemblance", so that it becomes a form of "protective or disguising coloration". Thayer distinguishes "concealing-colors" (mainly countershading for "invisibility") from the "other" branch of protective coloration, which includes most kinds of mimicry, for "deceptive visibility". The two branches are then named "obliterative coloration" and "mimicry". Mimicry is dismissed as playing "a very insignificant part" in the "higher orders", i.e. it is limited mainly to invertebrates. A fine photograph of a "white fowl, lacking counter-shading, against a flat white cloth" demonstrates that camouflage is more than color matching. Thayer then gives several examples of what he considers countershaded animals.
  Chapter 3 describes the combination of markings with countershading, with photographs of a model bird and of a woodcock, showing how in the correct position these are well camouflaged with "wonderful obliterative picture-patterns", but wrongly positioned or upside down (with a photograph of a dead woodcock) they are easily visible.
  Chapters 4 and 5 illustrate more "picture-patterns" in well camouflaged birds including Wilson's snipe and whip-poor-will (nighthawks and goatsuckers, Caprimulgidae). Thayer describes these as showing "obliteration, or merging with the background" but that their patterning is close to mimicry as they "perfectly" resemble objects such as "a stone or mossy log".
  Chapter 6 argues that some birds such as the ruffed grouse have patterns designed as camouflage against distant backgrounds, with a painting of a bird against a forest background as evidence. "The bird is in plain sight, but invisible". For the great horned owl, a piece of the wing is "super-imposed" on a photograph of a wood, "to show how closely the owl's patterns reproduce such a forest interior." The text describes the owl as having "a highly developed forest-vista pattern". Chapter 7 similarly argues for grass and heather patterns on "terrestrial" (as opposed to arboreal) birds. The disruptively patterned white-tailed ptarmigan is shown in "a very remarkable photograph" by Evan Lewis. Thayer attempts to classify the camouflage types, for example writing
  The principal feature of the pattern made by grasses over ground is a more or less intricate lace-work of crisscrossing, light-colored, linear forms, some straight, some curled and twisted, relieving with varying intensity against dark.
  — Thayer
  Chapter 8 continues the theme with "scansorial" or tree climbing birds. Chapter 9 claims that "obliterative shading, pure and simple, is the rule among the Shore Birds" such as sandpipers and curlew. Chapter 10 describes the "background-picturing" of bitterns, birds which live in reedbeds, where
  The light stripes on the bill were repeated and continued by the light stripes on the sides of the head and neck, and together they imitated very closely the look of separate, bright reed-stems; while the dark stripes pictured reeds in shadow, or the shadowed interstices between the stems.
  — Thayer
  Chapter 11 argues (in a way that was heavily criticised when the book appeared, see below) that water birds, some of them highly conspicuous like the jacana and notoriously the male wood duck, are colored for camouflage: "The beautifully contrasted black-and-white bars on the flanks of the Wood Duck (Aix sponsa) are ripple pictures, and as potent [as camouflage], 
caption: Fig. 7. "White fowl, lacking counter-shading, against a flat white cloth. To show that a monochrome object can not be 'obliterated', no matter what its background."
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