And in the age of satellite surveillance and the use of drones expanding beyond warfare, this is unlikely to stop any time soon.Īnother application we are unlikely to notice is the way that mobile phone masts and telegraph poles are starting to be made to look as inconspicuous as possible. It has many applications in the real world, even if we are unaware of them much of the time – which at least shows that it's working! Camouflage has a long history of applications in the military, from individual uniforms to the patterning on huge objects such as destroyers. See 'The wisdom of the crowd' for more on how scientists can utilise populations of players in their research.Ĭamouflage isn't just used for animals quivering in fear for their lives.
Games that utilise this 'crowdsourcing' approach are increasingly popular. Under the banner Project Nightjar, so far his team have released two different games, Where is that nightjar? and Where is that nest? that have been played by more than 15,000 people and provide a valuable and unique data set. While his colleagues are away in the field, Stevens have been overseeing the development of community-based game studies that ask key questions about how camouflage systems work. His BBSRC-funded Sensory Ecology and Evolution group are currently undertaking ambitious field studies in Africa using advanced hidden cameras (see this 01:30 video trailer for more on this work). Stevens has been working on the arms race between animal concealment and the way it attempts to fool the visual systems of predators for more than a decade. "There are many concepts and ideas just waiting to be tested." "Camouflage is extremely important for many animals, but we know relatively little about the underlying mechanisms of how it defeats predator vision and relates to survival, especially in natural systems" says Dr Martin Stevens of the University of Exeter.
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