How do animals develop camouflage, when they don’t know what other animals see?

Question

I’ve always admired the patterns of tigers, leopards, mantis shrimp, butterflies, etc. But I’ve always wondered how and why they become like that.

In: 6

Answer 1

Say, for instance, because of climate change there’s now snow in a rocky area where all the mice are brown. Now the brown mice stick out like a sore thumb against the white snow, so they all get picked off by hawks. Mice that happened to be a little lighter camouflage better in the new snowy environment, so more survive, and they produce offspring with lighter fur. Now imagine over many generations the mice with the lightest fur are less likely to get eaten by hawks, so they pass their light fur genes on more readily, and eventually you have all white mice in your now snowy environment. Speaking directly to tigers and leopards, through many many generations, stripes or spots were selected because they gave these animals slight advantages in their environments, so more of the genes for primitive stripes and spots were passed on, and then selection through time has resulted in the patterns we see today.