The dark spots blend in with the shadows and the lighter fur blends in with lighter areas of their surroundings like the sunlight shining on the plants around them. Sometimes an animal blends best into its environment when it is a solid color.
The white fur of the polar bear is perfect for an arctic environment. The red squirrel has reddish-brown fur on top and white fur on its undersides.
The darker top fur makes it harder for predators to see the squirrel when it is on the ground. When it is perched on a tree branch, the white fur on its belly helps it to blend into the lighter sky above. Penguins also have counter shading. Penguins spend a lot of time in the water. The dark feathers on their backs help camouflage them from predators that are swimming above them.
Their white stomach feathers hide them from predators swimming below them. The poisonous coral snake and the harmless king snake can look a lot alike.
Predators will avoid the king snake because they think it is poisonous. This type of mimicry is called Batesian mimicry. In Batesian mimicry a harmless species mimics a toxic or dangerous species. The viceroy butterfly and monarch butterfly were once thought to exhibit Batesian mimicry where a harmless species mimics a toxic species.
Studies conducted in the early 's suggest that the viceroy and the monarch are actually examples of Mullerian mimicry where two equally toxic species mimic each other to the benefit of each. Just goes to show you that there's always something new to discover in the natural world! Can You Tell the Difference? Click on each image to identify the butterfly. The frogfish or angler fish lures its prey to where it can strike. It has a long antenna-like extension on its head that it wiggles.
This helps it stay hidden in its dense jungle home. No two are the same. This allows researchers who study them in the wild to identify and count individual tigers. They use remote cameras to take pictures of the animals when they walk by. Using this method, tiger experts estimate that only about 3, wild tigers remain across their Asian homeland. When we have to sedate a tiger to treat an injury or do dental work, we shave their fur. So if stripes camouflage tigers from potential prey, why are some of them white?
Yes, they do! A genetic mutation in Bengal tigers gives them their milky white fur. Both parents must carry the same very rare gene to produce white cubs. White tigers are bred to relatives in captivity to attract tourists — and inbreeding produces unhealthy offspring. There were never more than a few white tigers in the wild. The answer I will provide here is based on both scientific evidence and my personal theories.
I am aware that I am opening myself up to much criticism, but what the heck: I was not around the hundreds or thousands of years ago when tiger colors were being defined, and neither was anyone is the scientific or zoological community, so I figure that my theories are as good as theirs. Tigers, like most predators, use coloring as camouflage. If their prey cannot see them they can get closer before the actual attack and are more likely to have dinner.
The tiger's normal colors of orange with black stripes allows them to blend easily in the jungles or in grass. Their stark white areas break up the pattern, as sunlight would through trees, bushes or grass.
Tigers attack with a burst of speed. They are able to cover short distances with remarkable quickness, but they are too heavy, and use too much energy to cover any significant distance. Given notice, gazelle and sambar can easily outrun a tiger. This is why the unique and beautiful color of the tiger is essential to their survival, so they can get close enough to their prey before it is aware that it. It is said that a white tiger would have no chance of survival in the wild, that their coloring provides no camouflage to speak of.
Although white is a good camouflage color try to spot a white cockatoo in a green tree , white tigers do not camouflage well in a jungle setting. On the other hand, a normal colored tiger is very difficult to spot in foliage even when you know where they are.
So why are there white tigers in the first place? Many in the zoological community seem to think that white tigers were the result of an errant gene mutation, and there was never a significant number of them in the wild. However, I have a different theory that I have held for a long time. It is generally accepted that the Bengal, Indochinese and other Asian tigers migrated there from colder climates hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago.
That is easy for me to believe, because if you know tigers at all you know that they have difficulty tolerating hot climates even today. But they are entirely comfortable taking a nap on a frozen over pool.
Our tigers are far more active in cooler or cold weather than during the summer months. If this is true, then we have to take another look at camouflage and white tigers. Given the obvious facts; 1 there is a lot of snow in colder climates, 2 tigers like colder weather and are adept in the snow, and 3 a white tiger would camouflage better in snow that a normal orange colored tiger, is it possible that the ancestors of today's tigers were white? Polar bears are white so they will blend with the environment.
Did you ever see a black polar bear? If white tigers camouflaged better in the snow country, they would have been more successful in killing prey, and therefore stronger and producing more like themselves. A darker tiger would have not eaten as well and most likely would not have survived. As the tigers began moving to the warmer climates the reverse would take place, with the white tigers having problems.
It would make sense that the tigers who ate better would be stronger, live longer and produce more like themselves. Many zoological "experts" have proposed to breed the white tigers to extinction; that is, do not breed any tigers that are white or carry the white gene and eventually there will be no more. Many institutions have made a lot of money in the past by exhibiting white tigers.
It is interesting that now, when white tigers are available to any interested party, those who profited from them immensely want them to be extinct. Their reasoning is that all white tigers in this country today are descendants of Mohini, a white tiger who was a direct descendant of Mohan, the first known captive white tiger.
Yes, they do! A genetic mutation in Bengal tigers gives them their milky white fur. Both parents must carry the same very rare gene to produce white cubs. White tigers are bred to relatives in captivity to attract tourists — and inbreeding produces unhealthy offspring.
There were never more than a few white tigers in the wild. The last one was spotted more than 60 years ago. That makes sense in terms of evolution. A white and black tiger is easier to spot than an orange tiger, so it would have a harder time catching its dinner.
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