Here’s the answer to today’s earlier “spot the chipmunk” post, with a comment by photographer Diana MacPherson:
Here is the chipmunk with a circle around him. They blend in so well in the leaves. When I saw this one, he hid behind a tree. It was cute that when I peered around the tree, he moved more behind the tree! 🙂
Squirrels of course do that too. I think it’s a behavior genetically instilled by natural selection, and one could test that by looking at the behavior of naive, hand-reared squirrels (or chimpmunks).
I for one can understand how a big scary predator like Diana could be a powerful selective agent.
Some woodpeckers scoot around the tree trunk when one tries to get a closer look too.
I saw it on the earlier post but only after zooming. Sneaky little ‘munk.
My color blindness strikes again. I had to zoom in and look carefully just to spot the circle.
Me too. It’s difficult to explain colour blindness to someone with normal vision, but here’s an excellent website with a Vision Simulator, which allows one to toggle between normal and colour deficient vision on a colourful photograph. Mine is deuteranopia, or red-green colour blindness, and if I toggle “normal” against “M-cone absent”, I see no difference. Give it a try, especially if you have normal vision. It’s a great help in understanding how some of us see the world.
Very helpful website, thanks.