How does a colored beetle make itself invisible with bright colors?

As we all know, animals always have their own little tricks in order to survive.

Some insects and animals will rely on advanced technology to integrate themselves into the environment, and the most common practice is to match the background color, which is what we often call camouflage.

Others, on the contrary, will cover themselves with brilliant colors, on the one hand to attract the opposite sex, and on the other hand to warn predators: "Don't go close, but it's poisonous." ”

For brightly colored animals, this defense mechanism is very problematic, and although it scares off predators, it also increases the probability of detection.

Many animals strike a balance between understated and captivating beauty, and some beetles take this balance to the extreme.

If you look closely at this one**, apparently we found a small colored beetle resting on a leaf, but scientists believe that not all creatures can see this bug.

This makes people wonder, how can they not see it when they are so conspicuous?

In fact, a new study suggests that we should think of rainbow colors as a different kind of camouflage, like rainbow camouflage.

The idea of "rainbow-colored camouflage" has been around for more than 100 years, but this study has shown for the first time that changeable metallic colors are one of the factors that animals hide themselves, and that in nature, it is difficult for birds and humans to spot rainbow-colored objects in complex forest environments.

How does this work?

That's because the color we see is not the color of the beetle, but the diffraction of light.

The beetle's wings form a lattice, breaking up light waves and pushing them together, diffraction so that light (i.e., color) is visible in some directions and angles, and easily ignored at others.

It's the same as the color of soap bubbles. The bubble itself is colorless, and when sunlight hits the membrane, the light is reflected and disturbed many times, resulting in a certain angle that the bubble is blue-green, and at some angles it is another color.

While it's easy to spot rainbow beetles in a well-lit museum, these brilliant colors may not be as dazzling in the dappled light of the natural environment, so a rainbow beetle can be difficult to spot.

The iridescent camouflage strategy may work better than traditional camouflage.

In laboratory tests, the team compared rainbow-colored wings to dull-colored ones.

Surprisingly, they found that these bright wings were less noticeable than their green counterparts.

Researchers believe that the combination of luster and iridescent colors creates an optical illusion that further confuses predators.

A colored beetle uses bright colors to make himself invisible, for example, when he is in a tree, he will use a protective color similar to the color of the tree to hide himself, and it has to be said that he is a very intelligent animal.

That's because some insects will integrate their bodies into their environment and will disguise themselves.

<> "Color Beetle Step 1: Draw a line drawing of the dust beetle.

Step 2: Fill in the content for the outline.

Step 3、Now paint the beetle。

Step 4: Continue to paint the color of the beetle.

Step 5: The beetle stick figure tutorial is complete.