The Colours of Animals: From Wallace to the Present Day Cryptic Coloration

Abstract

Abstract To the ordinary observer the colours of the various kinds of molluscs, insects, reptiles, birds, and mammals, appear to have no use, and to be distributed pretty much at random. There is a general notion that in the tropics everything—insects, birds, and flowers especially—is much more brilliantly coloured than with us; but the idea that we should ever be able to give a satisfactory reason why one creature is white and another black, why this caterpillar is green and that one brown, and a third adorned with stripes and spots of the most gaudy colours, would seem to most persons both presumptuous and absurd.