page_title: Self-decoration camouflage
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Self-decoration camouflage / History
caption_attribution_description: Caddisfly larva with pebble case in Thornton Creek, early Summer 2007, Seattle, WA, USA.
context_page_description: Self-decoration camouflage is a method of camouflage in which animals or soldiers select materials, sometimes living, from the environment and attach these to themselves for concealment.
  The method was described in 1889 by William Bateson, who observed Stenorhynchus decorator crabs. It was classified as "adventitious protection" by Edward Bagnall Poulton in 1890, and as "adventitious concealing coloration" or "adventitious resemblance" by Hugh Bamford Cott in 1940, who compared it to the way Australian aborigines stalked waterfowl, covering their faces with water lily leaves.
  Among animals, self-decoration is found in decorator crabs, some insects such as caddis flies and the masked hunter bug, and occasionally also in octopuses. In military camouflage, it is seen in the use of ghillie suits by snipers and the helmet nets of soldiers more generally, when these are camouflaged by inserting grass and other local plant materials, and in a more general way by the use of decorated camouflage netting over vehicles, gun emplacements and observation posts.
context_section_description: In 1889, William Bateson observed in detail the way that decorator crabs fix materials on their backs. He noted that "[t]he whole proceeding is most human and purposeful", and that if a Stenorhynchus crab is cleaned, it will "immediately begin to clothe itself again with the same care and precision as before".
  In his book The Colours of Animals (1890), Edward Bagnall Poulton classified protective animal coloration into types such as warning colours and protective mimicry. He included self decoration under the heading "Adventitious Protection", quoting Bateson's account of decorator crabs.
  In his textbook Adaptive Coloration in Animals (1940), Hugh Bamford Cott describes self-decoration under the heading "adventitious concealing coloration", also naming it "adventitious resemblance". He describes it as a device "perhaps unrivalled" for effective concealment, and points out that it is brought about and depends on "highly specialized behaviour". Further, it grades into other means of protection including "the borrowing of protection from aposematic partners" and the use of "fortified hiding-places" and burrows. Cott compares the way Australian aborigines once used water lily leaves over their faces to swim towards waterfowl until they were close enough to catch them by the legs.
caption: Caddisfly larva creates a portable tube decorated with local materials, here small pebbles, in which it lives.
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