Hypothetical dazzle schemes |
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A. Newnham, as quoted in H.B. Cott, Adaptive Coloration in Animals. London, Methuen, 1940, p. 330—
I was stretching across to collect a beetle and in withdrawing my hand touched what I took to be the disgusting excrement of a crow. Then to my astonishment I saw it was [not excrement but] a caterpillar half-hanging, half-lying limply down a leaf…[What] struck me was the skill with which the coloring rendered the varying surfaces, the dried section at the top, then the main portion, moist, viscid, soft, and the glistening globule at the end. A skilled artist, working with all the materials at his command, could not have done it better.