Editing Camouflage (section)

=== Self-decoration ===

{{main|Self-decoration}}

Some animals actively seek to hide by decorating themselves with materials such as twigs, sand, or pieces of shell from their environment, to break up their outlines, to conceal the features of their bodies, and to match their backgrounds. For example, a [[caddisfly]] larva builds a decorated case and lives almost entirely inside it; a [[Naxia tumida|decorator crab]] covers its back with seaweed, sponges, and stones.{{sfn|Forbes|2009|pages=50–51 and passim}} The [[Nymph (biology)|nymph]] of the predatory [[Reduvius personatus|masked bug]] uses its hind legs and a '[[Tarsus (skeleton)|tarsal]] fan' to decorate its body with sand or dust. There are two layers of bristles ([[trichome]]s) over the body. On these, the nymph spreads an inner layer of fine particles and an outer layer of coarser particles. The camouflage may conceal the bug from both predators and prey.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Wierauch |first=C. |year=2006 |title=Anatomy of disguise: camouflaging structures in nymphs of Some Reduviidae (Heteroptera) |journal=American Museum Novitates |issue=3542 |pages=1–18 |doi=10.1206/0003-0082(2006)3542[1:AODCSI]2.0.CO;2 |hdl=2246/5820 |s2cid=7894145 |url=http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/bitstream/2246/5820/1//v3/dspace/updateIngest/pdfs/N3542.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170816190844/http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/bitstream/2246/5820/1//v3/dspace/updateIngest/pdfs/N3542.pdf |archive-date=2017-08-16 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last=Bates |first=Mary |title=Natural Bling: 6 Amazing Animals That Decorate Themselves |url=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150610-animals-camouflage-decoration-bugs-science |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150611230313/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150610-animals-camouflage-decoration-bugs-science/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=11 June 2015 |magazine=National Geographic |access-date=11 June 2015|date=2015-06-10 }}</ref>

Similar principles can be applied for military purposes, for instance when a [[sniper]] wears a [[ghillie suit]] designed to be further camouflaged by decoration with materials such as tufts of grass from the sniper's immediate environment. Such suits were used as early as 1916, the British army having adopted "coats of motley hue and stripes of paint" for snipers.{{sfn|Forbes|2009|pages=102–103}} Cott takes the example of the larva of the [[blotched emerald]] moth, which fixes a screen of fragments of leaves to its specially hooked bristles, to argue that military camouflage uses the same method, pointing out that the "device is ... essentially the same as one widely practised during the Great War for the concealment, not of caterpillars, but of caterpillar-tractors, [gun] battery positions, observation posts and so forth."{{sfn|Cott|1940|page=360}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Ruxton |first1=Graeme D. |author1-link=Graeme Ruxton |last2=Stevens |first2=Martin |author2-link=Martin Stevens (biologist) |title=The evolutionary ecology of decorating behaviour |journal=Biology Letters |date=1 June 2015 |page=20150325 |volume=11 |issue=6 |doi=10.1098/rsbl.2015.0325 |pmid=26041868 |pmc=4528480 }}</ref>

<gallery class="center" mode="nolines" heights="150px" widths="150px">
File:Hyastenus elatus.jpg|This [[Hyastenus elatus|decorator crab]] has covered its body with sponges.
File:IDF-CombatEngineeringSniper001.jpg|Sniper in a [[Ghillie suit]] with plant materials
File:Reduvius personatus, Masked Hunter Bug nymph camouflaged with sand grains.JPG|''[[Reduvius personatus]]'', masked hunter bug nymph, camouflaged with sand grains
File:Battle of Lake Khasan-Camouflaged soviet tanks.jpg|Soviet tanks under netting dressed with vegetation, 1938
</gallery>