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Journalism of Courage
It was warm and sweltering that morning at the Yamuna Biodiversity Park, Delhi, and even the birds and animals seemed to have sought shelter in the shade. Then, near the famous ‘bamboo bridge’ a large female nilgai suddenly steps out onto the path from the high dry grass, about 30 feet away. She is a dusky grey-brown, perfectly matching her surroundings and startled moves back into the bush as silently as a ghost. No thudding of hooves, no crashing of foliage and when I peered into the section she had vanished into, there was nothing.
It made me think about how animals, large and small, nearly always are a perfect match for their surroundings. Even sharks, which ought to fear none, are counter-shaded, light below and dark above so that they merge with the depths when seen from above and with the sky when looked at from below. Being apex predators, they don’t wear these shades to hide – they wear them to ambush their prey. The same holds true for all the predators – big cats, wolves, polar bears and beneath the oceans, those masters of camouflage, octopuses and cuttlefish, who use their shape-shifting talents for dual purposes: to ambush and escape from predators. You will never see the stonefish you accidentally step on and, unfortunately, these are armed with extremely toxic and painful spines, from which there is very little chance of recovery.
The supercilious chameleon is another one that can change its colour and skin texture and patterns, to merge into the background, again to lie in wait for a victim or to vanish when a predator turns up. On the banks of rivers and lakes, crocodiles lie in wait, mud-coloured and grinning and will slip beneath the water like submarines the moment they spot a prospective meal. People unfortunate enough to be bitten by snakes (especially in paddy fields) rarely see their assassins because they are so perfectly camouflaged that they often get accidentally stepped upon.
The insect world is replete with these invisible wonders. The praying mantis is not only a dead ringer for the plant she poises on (the orchid mantis is one sterling example), but will also rock (somewhat menacingly) back and forth, like a leaf in a breeze to scam her victims. Butterflies and moths resemble fallen leaves and some will even lean over on the ground as if just blown down from the trees above. Some have owl- or snake-like eyespots on their wings, which they unfurl suddenly in the face of their startled predators giving them time enough to escape, while others have false ‘faces’ on their rear ends, giving them a 50-50 chance of survival in case of a bite! It may make them fly a bit lopsided afterwards, but heck, they’re still alive.
Often, the only way you can winkle out an insect that doesn’t want to reveal itself is to make it to move. I was surprised by a leaf-bug on a rosebush, which was differently coloured and patterned, back and front to perfectly blend with the leaves of that plant, and I only spotted it when I moved in to photograph the roses. A centipede that charged me in the shower, just vanished uncannily against the marble flooring when it kept still.
The same thing often happens with birds: There you are scanning a tree or bush in which you know the bird lurks, you see nothing and take a step forwards, only to flush not one, but a whole flock of them who have been lying doggo. (Green pigeons are famous for this trick). And even when you spot one and gaze at it, it will wait for that one fraction of a second when it knows your eyes are not on it – and off it goes.
Even plants use disguises to scam. There is one, whose flower resembles a female bee, and when a gentleman bee comes along, seduces him, snares him, daubing him with pollen before letting him go. The idiot learns nothing and tries making out with another similar bloom – and hey presto, pollination takes place but no baby bees!
While many male birds are flamboyantly clad, their ladies are dun coloured to enable them hunker down unseen on their eggs. But even a richly tapestried peacock can vanish uncannily into the foliage once it knows it’s been spotted. Even elephants, which really need not hide from anything (except us) can move as silently as smoke through their forest habitats.
Inhabitants of the frozen Polar regions change their appearance to match the season. The Arctic fox, Arctic hare and ptarmigan are pure white in winter and speckled brown in summer after the snow melts. Much closer home, I’ve noticed caterpillars (of say the lime butterfly) are green if hatched during the monsoon and twig-brown when hatched post-monsoon.
It is mind-boggling to think how Mother Nature has engineered these disguises, bit by bit over millions and millions of years of evolution. Her attention to detail is remarkable, every shade, every nuance of behaviour is replicated perfectly. (She would make a counterfeiter par excellence).
Some creatures go to the other extreme: they will dress themselves to the nines in screaming scarlets, electric blues, fiery oranges, yellows, purples and blacks as ‘in your face designer’ as it can get. Central and South America’s poison dart frogs are a prime example: they are all shouting out, ‘touch us and you’re dead!’ And they are not fibbing because their skins secrete lethal venom that they’ve hoarded from their diet – poisonous leaves consumed by poisonous insects and then by them. It’s ‘tag and you’re dead’, not hide and seek for them.
