Eli5 How do animals and insects get so specific with their camouflage?

Question

Like dry leaves or shapes of animals. How do they know what to mimic??

In: 283

Answer 1

They don’t “know” what to mimic. The ones who mimicked the right things survived, the rest died. That’s how evolution works. It’s not a choice made by anything or anyone, it’s just a byproduct of the best adapted (randomly mutated) option surviving and reproducing the most.