Camouflage the peacock flounder, squid and octopus actively change their skin patterns and colours using special chromatophore cells to resemble their current background, or, as in most chameleons, for signalling. However, Smith's dwarf chameleon does use active colour change for camouflage. Each chromatophore contains pigment of only one colour. In fish and frogs, colour change is mediated by the type of chromatophores known as melanophores that contain dark pigment. A melanophore is star-shaped; it contains many small pigmented organelles which can be dispersed throughout the cell, or aggregated near its centre. When the pigmented organelles are dispersed, the cell makes a
Camouflage some experimental evidence on the effectiveness of camouflage, his 500-page textbook was, like Thayer's, mainly a natural history narrative which illustrated theories with examples. Camouflage is a soft-tissue feature that is rarely preserved in the fossil record, but rare fossilised skin samples from the Cretaceous period show that some marine reptiles were countershaded. The skins, pigmented with dark-coloured eumelanin, reveal that both leatherback turtles and mosasaurs had dark backs and light bellies. Experimental evidence that camouflage helps prey avoid being detected by predators was first provided in 2016, when ground-nesting birds (plovers and coursers) were shown to survive according to