How Stick Insects Use Camouflage - with Richard Dawkins
Some insects have evolved incredibly detailed foms of camouflage, so they appear to blend almost perfectly into their surroundings. In this clip from 1991 CHRISTMAS LECTURES "Growing up in...
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This is a stick insect. It may look fairly conspicuous on my hand although I've made an effort to make it feel at home with my shirt. But you'd have to see it in its really natural surroundings in order to see it at its best. There it would blend in almost totally. The attention to detail is astonishing, you can even see little marks suggesting bark on its back. You could almost say that it fits its environment like a key fits a lock. And I've got something else under my hat. This is a different kind of stick insect, a leaf insect, it mainly resembles leaves dead leaves. You see how it rocks like that I suspect that it's got a second line of defense which is that when it's when it's startled and when a bird might almost have got it it...
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This is a stick insect. It may look fairly conspicuous on my hand although I've made an effort to make it feel at home with my shirt. But you'd have to see it in its really natural surroundings in order to see it at its best. There it would blend in almost totally. The attention to detail is astonishing, you can even see little marks suggesting bark on its back. You could almost say that it fits its environment like a key fits a lock. And I've got something else under my hat. This is a different kind of stick insect, a leaf insect, it mainly resembles leaves dead leaves. You see how it rocks like that I suspect that it's got a second line of defense which is that when it's when it's startled and when a bird might almost have got it it...
