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10 - What can camouflage tell us about non-human visual perception? A case study of multiple cue use in cuttlefish (Sepia spp.)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Sarah Zylinski  and
Daniel Osorio
Edited by
Martin Stevens  and
Sami Merilaita
Sarah Zylinski
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
Daniel Osorio
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
Martin Stevens
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Sami Merilaita
Affiliation:
Åbo Akademi University, Finland
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Summary

Processes in the psychological plane cause us to overlook the fact that in the physical plane all optical effects whatsoever are fundamentally due to differences of colour and brightness, and of light and shade.

Cott (1940, p. 3)

Accounts of camouflage reflect basic concepts about the relationship between sensory perception and the physical world. The twist is that whereas the discussion of this question normally refers to human perception we must now focus on non-human species. Cott's (1940) book on Adaptive Coloration in Animals remains the most valuable work on camouflage. Cott was familiar with the idea that to achieve verisimilitude an artist has to paint the physical patterns of light and shade created by three-dimensional surfaces. Naïve artists overlook these optical effects in favour of ‘higher-level’ objects. Only with skill and training is it possible to recover the ‘innocence of the eye’ that is needed to render naturalistic scenes on canvas (Cott 1940; Gombrich 1960). This reasoning led Cott to explicitly reject psychological interpretations of camouflage in favour of what he saw as ‘simple’ optical effects. Cott was however interested in the psychology of attention, as with the suggestion that high-contrast internal features distract the viewer.

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Type
Chapter
Information
Animal Camouflage
Mechanisms and Function
 , pp. 164 - 185
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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