Animal Warnings and Colorations

Animal Warnings and Coloration

An Animal's Defense

The opposite strategy of camouflaging is to make yourself as obvious as possible. This is often called warning coloration.

At first thought, an animal colored in such a way seems foolish and silly. If you make yourself obvious, you will surly end up dinner for some predator. There is, however, a catch to this warning coloration strategy.

Animals with warning coloration usually have some feature to warn about. For instance, one animal with this kind of coloration is the skunk. The skunk has pretty significant claws and sharp teeth, but those are not enough to fight off a hungry fox or wolf. Running away is not an option because the skunk waddles and is too slow. The skunk's defense is its unpleasant odor which the predators find just as unpleasant as we do. The highly noticeable black and white striping of a skunk makes it easy for predators to learn what they look like — so while they may try skunk once or twice, they will quickly learn to look for something else to eat. Some skunks die in the learning process, but it is overall a very successful strategy.

Some animals sneak by on the coat tails of others.

Mimicry is the phenomenon in which one animal looks a lot like a different animal.

For instance, there is a poisonous snake called the Coral snake which has brilliant warning coloration. Its body is broadly striped in red, yellow and black. A second snake, the King snake, has a very similar coloration pattern — but it isn't poisonous. The nasty experiences predators have with coral snakes also protect the King snake. This "piggy back" strategy is mimicry.

If an animal is able to mimic another animal that is either poisonous, dangerous to it's predators, or any other flaw that would discourage the predator from making it dinner, then it has a better chance at surviving in it's habitat.

Page One: An Animal's Offense

Page Three: Animals and Their Coloration Warnings