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Animals With Amazing Camouflage: 12 Masters of Disguise
A mantis that looks like a flower, a fish that looks like seaweed and a gecko that looks like a dead leaf. Meet 12 animals with amazing camouflage.
Some animals hide by running. These ones hide by standing still and looking like something else: a flower, a leaf, a rock or a branch. Here are 12 animals with camouflage so good you could be looking straight at them and not notice.
Orchid mantis
The orchid mantis doesn’t hide among flowers, it pretends to be one. Its legs look like pink petals, and bees and flies come to it expecting nectar. Instead, they become lunch.
Leafy sea dragon
Covered in leaf-shaped flaps, the leafy sea dragon looks like a piece of drifting seaweed off southern Australia. It even sways with the water to complete the act.
Satanic leaf-tailed gecko
This gecko from Madagascar looks exactly like a dead, curled leaf, complete with a tail that has notches like a nibbled edge. By day it hangs among dry leaves and is almost impossible to spot.
Mata mata turtle
Is it a turtle or a pile of bark and leaves? The mata mata of South America lies still on the riverbed, then sucks in passing fish in a split second.
Stonefish
It looks like a lumpy, algae-covered rock on the reef. It’s actually the most venomous fish in the world, and stepping on one is extremely painful.
Potoo
A bird that pretends to be a broken branch. The potoo sits upright on a dead stump all day, with its feathers matching the bark perfectly.
Strange but trueThe mimic octopus goes further than hiding. It changes its shape and colour to imitate dangerous animals, such as a lionfish, a flatfish or a sea snake, depending on who’s chasing it.
Mimic octopus
Found off Indonesia, this octopus can change both its colour and its body shape to look like other animals, a kind of camouflage that goes beyond blending in.
Indian leaf butterfly
Wings open, it’s bright orange and blue. Wings closed, it’s a dry brown leaf, complete with a fake midrib and veins. It’s also called the dead leaf butterfly.
Pygmy seahorse
Smaller than a fingernail, with knobbly skin that matches the exact colour and texture of the sea fan it lives on. It was only discovered when a scientist noticed one on a sea fan he had collected.
Peacock flounder
A flat fish that lies on the sea floor and changes its colour and pattern to match the sand or gravel beneath it in a few seconds.
Tasselled wobbegong
A shark that looks like a shaggy rug. Fringes of skin around its mouth break up its outline as it lies on the reef, waiting for fish to swim right up to its face.
Thorny devil
The thorny devil of the Australian desert blends into sand and dry grass with its yellow and red colours and jerky walk. When that fails, it shows a spiky fake head.
Different ways to disappear
- Background matching: looking like the surface you sit on, like the flounder.
- Masquerade: looking like a specific object, such as a leaf, branch or rock.
- Disruptive patterns: fringes and stripes that break up the body’s outline, like the wobbegong.
- Aggressive mimicry: using a disguise to attract prey, like the orchid mantis.
Learn more in Flower Mantis: How the Orchid Mantis Looks Like a Flower and our Camouflage collection.
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