Amazing camouflaged animals (1)

Common baron caterpillar

If you're a hungry bird in western Malaysia, good luck finding any common baron caterpillars. Plenty of other butterfly larvae blend in with local plants, but few can vanish into vegetation like the baron.

 

 

Pygmy seahorse

Coral reefs are rough places to live, so their residents often use camouflage to stay safe. And when it comes to living incognito among coral, the pygmy seahorse wrote the book.

 

 

Mossy leaf-tailed gecko

It may look like this lizard has been overrun with moss, but save your sympathy — that's its skin. This is the mossy leaf-tailed gecko, a master of disguise found only in the forests of Madagascar

 

 Click on the Image to enlarge.

Jaguar

This jaguar may be at a zoo in the U.K., but not even England is immune to its versatile fur. Like many cats, jaguars have evolved vague, spotty patterns that blend into a variety of backgrounds, including some far from home.

 

 

Tawny frogmouth

Famous for their gaping beaks and big yellow eyes, tawny frogmouths look like cartoon characters — when they're not imitating a tree, that is. If they suspect danger, they simply close their eyes, tilt back their heads and blend into the bark, as the one on the left is doing in this photo 

 

  Click on the Image to enlarge.

Stonefish

If you're ever snorkeling in the Indian or Pacific Ocean, look out for coral reefs looking back at you. You could be staring down a stonefish, the most venomous fish on Earth.

 

 

Amazing camouflaged animals (2)

Katydid

If you don't immediately see both katydids in this photo, don't feel bad. Their leaflike bodies also help them evade countless birds, frogs, snakes and other predators around the world.

 

 

Flounder

As a type of "flatfish," flounder are ideally suited to life on the ocean floor. They huddle up to the seabed, often aided by speckled skin that helps them blend in, such as this pebble-dwelling flounder. That offers safety from predators, but also lets them ambush prey like shrimp, worms and fish larvae.

 

 

Egyptian nightjar

Nightjars are small, nocturnal birds found around the world, often called "goatsuckers" due to a myth about stealing goats' milk (they do hang out near goats, but just to eat the insects they attract). Most nightjars nest on the ground, and many have evolved feathers to match — such as this young Egyptian nightjar, seen resting in its desert habitat.

 

 

Stick insect

While most animals need a specific backdrop for their camouflage to work, a few are so well-disguised they're incognito almost anywhere. Stick insects are a good example, with twig-like bodies that let them become virtually invisible just by holding still.

 

 

Arctic fox

It may seem bland at first glance, but an Arctic fox's ghostly, almost-blue coat is ideal attire on the tundra. Not only does it disappear in snow and defy temperatures as low as 58 below zero, but it also changes colors for summer, letting the fox hide among rocks and plants.

 

 

 

Chameleon

Few animals are as famous for camouflage as chameleons, whose color-changing skills have made them icons of adaptability. But that probably wasn't the reason they evolved the ability — instead, scientists think they mainly change colors to communicate.

 

Grand Canyon USA

 

 

Art of Roack Balancing

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strange Jack Fruit

It can be seen as a child holding a mother.

Ten Weirdest New Animals of 2010

T. Rex Leech

Photograph courtesy PLoS ONE

A new leech king of the jungle, Tyrannobdella rex—or "tyrant leech king"—was discovered in the remote Peruvian Amazon, National Geographic News reported in April.

The up-to-three-inch-long (about seven-centimeter-long) leech has large teeth, like its dinosaur namesake Tyrannosaurus rex. What's more, the newfound critter's "naughty bits are rather small," noted study co-author Mark Siddall, curator of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

 

New Purple Octopus?

Photograph courtesy Bedford Institute of Oceanography

This unidentified purple octopus is one of 11 potentially new species found during a July deep-sea expedition off Canada's Atlantic coast.

 

"Yoda Bat"

Photograph courtesy Piotr Naskrecki, Conservation International

This tube-nosed fruit bat—which became a Web sensation as "Yoda bat"—is just one of the roughly 200 species encountered during two scientific expeditions to Papua New Guinea in 2009, scientists announced in October.

 

Sneezing Snub-Nosed Monkey

Photograph courtesy Ngwe Lwin

A new monkey species in Myanmar is so snub-nosed that rainfall is said to makes it sneeze—but that's apparently the least of its problems, conservationists announced in October.

 

"Ninja" Slug

Photograph courtesy Peter Koomen

Boasting a tail three times the length of its head, the newly described long-tailed slug is found only in the high mountains of the Malaysian part of Borneo, scientists said in April.

 

Wood-Eating Catfish

Photograph by Michael Goulding/Copeia

A new species of armored, wood-eating catfish (pictured underwater) found in the Amazon rain forest feeds on a fallen tree in the Santa Ana River in Peru in 2006.

 

The Simpsons Toad

Photograph courtesy Robin Moore, ILCP

Nosing around for "lost" amphibian species in western Colombia in September, scientists stumbled across three entirely new species—including this beaked toad.

 

 

Self-Cloning Lizard

Photograph courtesy Lee Grismer

You could call it the surprise du jour: A popular food on Vietnamese menus has turned out to be a lizard previously unknown to science, scientists said in November. 

 

Squid Worm

Photograph courtesy Laurence Madin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Squid? Worm? Initially, this new species—with bristle-based "paddles" for swimming and tentacles on its head—so perplexed Census of Marine Life researchers that they threw in the towel and simply called it squidworm, National Geographic News reported in November.

 

Pink Handfish

Photograph courtesy Karen Gowlett-Holmes

Using its fins to walk, rather than swim, along the ocean floor in an undated picture, the pink handfish is one of nine newly named species described in a scientific review of the handfish family released in May.

Catfish hunts Pigeon

 

 Catfish

 

 

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