If animals that live in snowy environments are white cause they get better camouflage, then why aren’t animals that live in jungles green?

Question

bears that live in snowy environments are white, so why are bears that live in forests brown or black?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Cos most animals are actually pretty bad at colour perception. The goal of camouflage in a complex environment like a jungle is to break up the outline of the animal, rather than disguise its colouration. That’s why every camouflaged animal, including fighter humans, have complex patterns like spots, stripes or khaki. You’re not going to find a bright pink leopard, but an orange leopard with a lot of black and white spots is actually a lot harder to perceive as an individual animal than an entirely green leopard.

Also, green is a surprisingly rare colour in nature (even plants only evolved green once and every single plant today has inherited it from that one ancestor). It’s only evolved when it provides a significant evolutionary benefit over any other colour. For animals that live in the shade, like most ambush predators, just some dark colour does the job.