Australia’s Camouflaged Creatures

Many animal species in Australia protect themselves by using camouflage -- a way of hiding by blending into their surroundings.

A

Most species use camouflage to some extent. If their disguises are convincing, they survive and pass their genes on to future generations. After generations of natural selection, animals may develop remarkably complex camouflage techniques by manipulating shape, colour and movement.

"The principle of camouflage is to make it economically unviable for a predator to pursue a particular species of prey," explains Professor Mark Elgar of the University of Melbourne.

"Camouflage increases the search time and, as a consequence, the predator will simply target another species, either because it cannot see the camouflaged individual or because it finds something more obvious to pursue."

B

The simplest way for an animal to disguise itself is to become effectively invisible in its surroundings. Stick insects and leaf insects have therefore evolved complex forms of camouflage to conceal themselves from predators.

Many have the texture of sticks or dead leaves, while others imitate living foliage, including the veins of a leaf. Some insects even develop blemishes that resemble spots caused by plant diseases.

A convincing appearance works only if its owner also behaves appropriately. During the day, an insect using this kind of camouflage remains motionless or sways like a dead leaf in the wind. If disturbed, it falls to the ground and stays still.

Entomologist Paul Zborowski, who has spent decades photographing difficult-to-see creatures, considers the desert insects of Central Australia to be the most convincingly disguised animals he has encountered.

"It is an incredibly old habitat, so the creatures have had a long time to adapt," Zborowski explains. Most behave like stones and remain motionless throughout the day, feeding only at night.

C

A tawny frogmouth sitting motionless on a tree stump also illustrates the importance of combining a convincing appearance with appropriate behaviour.

Professor Gisela Kaplan of the University of New England in Australia says that the frogmouth’s ability to camouflage itself is learned behaviour. Although adopting a particular pose may be a reflex and can be observed during a chick’s first week, its ability to select a background that matches its colouration does not develop until it is four to six months old.

When the chicks land, they are often highly visible, and their parents attempt to signal to them to move to a safer location.

D

Fixed camouflage is effective only in a relatively unchanging environment. Some animals, such as cuttlefish, have therefore evolved adaptable disguises.

A cuttlefish can change its colour, pattern and texture almost instantly to match its surroundings by using specialised cells and muscles.

On Queensland’s reefs, scientists have been studying another marine animal that changes colour, although not in order to blend into its surroundings.

Dr Karen Cheney of the University of Queensland says that the bluestriped fangblenny alters its colouration to imitate other species of fish. This allows it to travel with them and gain protection through safety in numbers.

Its most impressive imitation is that of the cleaner wrasse, which has black and bright-blue stripes and eats parasites from larger fish.

The fangblenny benefits from the reduced risk of predation associated with the cleaner wrasse’s positive relationship with other fish. Its disguise also enables it to approach its prey.

It darts from the safety of the wrasse’s cleaning station to bite unsuspecting fish passing nearby, but it does not attack fish that have come to be cleaned.

E

The most famous form of mimicry, however, is used for defence rather than attack. Batesian mimicry refers to animals that protect themselves from predators by imitating a dangerous organism, often through the use of conspicuous colours.

The nineteenth-century naturalist Henry Bates first proposed this camouflage technique after noticing that several Amazonian butterfly species looked alike. The technique was later named after him.

In Australian waters, the harmless harlequin snake eel has the same black-and-white bands as the highly poisonous yellow-lipped sea krait, ensuring that predators avoid it.

However, the success of Batesian mimicry depends on the proportion of mimics to genuine dangerous animals. If a predator encounters too many edible animals with the same markings, it may conclude that none of the animals displaying those markings is dangerous, explains Martyn Robinson, an educational naturalist at the Australian Museum.

F

An imitation of a more dangerous animal does not need to be exact. It only needs to make potential predators hesitate.

The hawk moth caterpillar has markings on its abdomen resembling a snake’s eyes. When threatened, the caterpillar pulls in its head and the false "eyes" suddenly appear.

It is unclear whether a potential predator believes it has encountered a snake or is simply startled, but the result is that the caterpillar survives.

G

In Queensland’s tablelands, the chameleon gecko has another way of making predators hesitate. Its body is brown, but its tail is marked with black-and-white bands.

Robinson explains that when the gecko is attacked, it releases its tail, which continues to wriggle on the ground. Many lizards use this defence, but the bones in the chameleon gecko’s tail also rub against each other, causing the detached tail to squeak.

"The predator is completely absorbed by this black-and-white-striped, wriggling and squeaking object on the ground, allowing the gecko to escape," Robinson says.

The trick can be used only once because the replacement tail is entirely brown, like the rest of the gecko’s body.

Such precise disguises and elaborate tricks demonstrate the apparently limitless possibilities of nature. However, as Robinson points out, only the most successful illusionists have survived to tell the tale.

The Psychology of New Product Adoption

John Gourville explores why consumers do not always purchase new products.

A

An American philosopher once said, "If a man can make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, the world will make a beaten path to his door." If only marketing innovation were that simple.

In today’s marketplace, companies that successfully introduce new products are more likely to flourish than those that do not. However, businesses spend billions of dollars producing better "mousetraps", only to find that consumers reject them.

Studies show that new products fail at the astonishing rate of between forty and ninety per cent. In the United States packaged-goods industry, for example, companies introduce 30,000 new products every year, but between seventy and ninety per cent remain on store shelves for less than twelve months.

According to one study, forty-seven per cent of start-up companies that pioneered new products later went out of business completely.

B

Experts and non-experts alike tend to dismiss unsuccessful innovations as bad ideas that were always destined to fail. However, this explanation is surely too simple.

If the innovations were so misguided, why was this not obvious from the beginning? Why do consumers reject innovative products that possess clear advantages over existing alternatives?

To understand why new products fail, it is necessary to examine the psychology of behavioural change.

C

Companies have long assumed that they need only develop innovations that are objectively superior to existing products and consumers will have sufficient motivation to purchase them.

During the 1960s, communications scholar Everett Rogers called this concept "relative advantage" and identified it as the most important factor in the adoption of new products.

Although convincing, the theory has a major weakness: it fails to account for the psychological biases that influence decision-making.

In 2002, psychologist Daniel Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in Economics for research explaining why individuals depart from rational economic behaviour.

One of the foundations of that research, developed with psychologist Amos Tversky, concerns how individuals evaluate choices in the marketplace. Kahneman and Tversky demonstrated that people’s responses to the alternatives available to them have four distinct characteristics.

D

First, people judge the attractiveness of an alternative according not to its objective or actual value but to its subjective or perceived value.

Second, consumers evaluate new products in relation to the products they already possess.

Third, people regard any improvements in relation to this reference point as gains and treat any disadvantages as losses.

Fourth, and most importantly, losses have a much greater effect on people than gains of an equivalent size. Kahneman and Tversky called this phenomenon "loss aversion".

Loss aversion causes people to value products they already own more highly than products they do not possess. In other words, the desire to keep what people already have is far stronger than the desire to acquire something new.

E

In a 1990 paper, behavioural economist Richard Thaler and his colleagues described a series of experiments conducted to measure this phenomenon.

In one experiment, they gave coffee mugs to a group called the "Sellers" and asked how much money, from 25 cents to $9.25, they would require before agreeing to give up the mugs.

The researchers then asked another group, called the "Choosers", who had not received mugs, to indicate whether they would prefer the money or the mug at each price.

Objectively, the Sellers and Choosers were in the same situation: both were choosing between a mug and a sum of money.

In one trial, the Sellers valued their mugs at an average of $7.12, whereas the Choosers were willing to pay only $3.12. In another trial, the two groups valued the mugs at $7 and $3.50 respectively.

Overall, the Sellers consistently demanded at least twice as much money to surrender their mugs as the Choosers were prepared to pay to obtain them.

F

In a 1989 paper, economist Jack Knetsch helped explain why people tend to retain what they already possess, even when a better alternative is available. He provided a persuasive demonstration of what is known as the "status quo bias".

Knetsch asked one group of students to choose between an attractive coffee mug and a bar of Swiss chocolate.

He gave a second group coffee mugs but later allowed each student to exchange the mug for a chocolate bar.

Finally, he gave chocolate bars to a third group and later allowed them to exchange the chocolate for a mug.

Of the students initially offered a free choice, fifty-six per cent selected the mug and forty-four per cent selected the chocolate bar. This indicated a nearly equal preference for the two products.

Logically, therefore, approximately half of the students who had initially received mugs should have exchanged them for chocolate, and approximately half of those who had received chocolate should have exchanged it for mugs.

In reality, only eleven per cent of students with mugs and ten per cent of students with chocolate bars wanted to exchange their products.

For approximately ninety per cent of the students, surrendering what they already possessed felt like a painful loss and reduced their willingness to trade.

G

Interestingly, most people appear to be unaware of the behavioural tendencies associated with these biases.

In study after study, when researchers showed people evidence that they had irrationally overvalued what they possessed, the participants were shocked, sceptical and defensive.

These behavioural tendencies are universal, but awareness of them is not.

H

In an ideal world, companies would recognise that consumers irrationally overvalue existing products and would take this bias into account when introducing innovations.

However, developers are also biased -- in favour of new products. After working on a new product for years, developers operate in a world in which their innovation has become the reference point.

They are convinced that the product works and are highly conscious of the weaknesses of existing alternatives.

Companies call such developers "product champions" or "believers", suggesting that they have embraced a perspective that the rest of the public has not yet accepted.