Hide! 4 Tiny Animals That Go Undercover In Style
Meet four of nature’s masters of disguise: decorator crabs stay out of sight with the latest in seaweed fashion; pygmy seahorses blend seamlessly with their surroundings; glasswing butterflies sport the see-through look; and the Australian walking stick keeps you guessing with its multiple secret identities.
TRANSCRIPT
Now you see me… now you don’t!
These 4 tiny animals go undercover – in style.
Pygmy seahorses use bright colors to avoid being seen.
Australian stick insects disguise themselves to break into an ants’ nest.
Glasswing butterflies go with the see-through look.
First up, decorator crabs keep up with all the tidepool trends to stay out of sight.
Time for a crab fashion show.Models! This one is wearing the latest in purple seaweed.
Over here, a striking piece of kelp.
And for this guy … that’s a lotta look! But these crabs aren’t dressing up to get noticed. They’re trying to blend in.
These decorator crabs live in the tide pools and rocky shores off the California coast.
It’s a dangerous place for a tasty crab.
So the crabs camouflage with what’s at hand.
This kelp crab has found something to work with.
It does a little trimming, cutting a piece to size … nudges it into place.
And it sticks, thanks to rows of natural Velcro on its head.
The crabs have these special hooked hairs on their shell.
See how this bit of seaweed is wedged right in there, held tight?
With a tug, the crab makes sure of that.
The seaweed is hiding its antennae.
If they weren’t covered, their fluttering would give the crab away.
And sometimes one piece of flair just isn’t enough.
Meet the extreme decorator crab, the ultimate fashionista.
It’s covered in hooks all over its body.
A quick check and the crab can tell its face is unprotected.
Get to work!
This crab is a picky dresser.
It nibbles on a piece of algae, trying to figure out, is this good to eat?
Or is it covered in noxious chemicals that make it better suited as an outfit?
This crab has made it work.
And it has the ultimate off-putting accessory, an anemone: outerwear that actually stings.
Over time, the anemones and seaweed can grow and spread on the crab’s shell.
It’s a lot to lug around. But it’s worth it. Being fabulous just might save your life.
The Australian walking stick is a master of deception, but a twig is just one of its many disguises.
Our story begins with a seed, an ant, and a leaf. Or does it?
Each one of these is a phase in the life of the same creature.
The Australian walking stick.
Deep in the forests of eastern Australia, a seed drops from the canopy above.
Foraging ants carry it down to their underground burrow.
They snack on the nutritious cap, leaving the rest intact.
But this “seed” is a knock-off.
It’s actually an Australian walking stick insect’s egg.
Here it is next to a real seed the ants also brought into the nest.
The delicious part of this real seed is called the “elaiosome,” and the same part on the egg is called the “capitulum.”
It’s an evolutionary strategy to get that egg underground.
Why? Ant nests are just the right humidity for the developing egg, and are well-protected from parasites and predators.
Several months later, the egg hatches underground, and a stick insect nymph emerges from the nest.
It runs, looking for safety in the foliage above.
It has taken on a new disguise: as a red-headed spider ant.
Not only does it look a lot like the ant – it also moves like one.
And even strikes a pose like the ant, curling its abdomen.
Looking and acting like an ant may save this nymph’s life.
Predators tend to steer clear of ants.
Ants swarm – sometimes they bite and sting – and most worker ants aren’t all that nutritious.
On top of that, red-headed spider ants taste like rotten coconut or bad cheese.
These birds take a hard pass.
Upon closer inspection, the disguise doesn’t really hold up. But hey – it gets the job done.
And it doesn’t need to last long.
The red on the Australian walking stick’s head fades in just a few days.
So the nymph races upwards, into the trees.
After about a month, the insect begins to change yet again.
It will molt six times as it perfects its final costume, as it grows into an adult.
That frenetic ant energy gives way to a gentle swaying – like a leaf in the breeze.
Nothing to see here, predators.
The insects graze all day, mostly on eucalyptus leaves, plumping up and growing as long as your palm.
Adults vary in color. Some even take on the green ruffled shape of a lichen.
You might think it’d be hard to find each other with all this camouflage, but they communicate with pheromones, so no problem.
Sometime after mating, the female lays her eggs, and the cycle begins again.
The fake seed and pretend ant phases are more than just protection from parasites and predators.
Since adult Australian walking stick insects don’t actually walk much, they rely on seed-collecting ants to disperse their eggs throughout the forest.
Then it’s up to their zippy, ant-impersonating offspring to help them spread out even further.
The Australian walking stick insect has evolved so many looks, it almost seems like it’s having an identity crisis.
But just because you can shapeshift from one form to another – and another – doesn’t mean you don’t know exactly what you are.
These tiny ocean creatures sport vibrant colors to pull off a masterful vanishing act.
This is a Pygmy seahorse. These are some of the smallest seahorses in the world– smaller than a paperclip.
Camouflage is critical to their survival. It’s how they hide from predators.
These seahorses are too small and fragile to make it on their own.
So unless they find a place they fit in perfectly, they’ll die.
So the pygmy seahorses spend their entire adult lives on a type of coral called a sea fan.
Orange pygmy seahorses live on orange sea fans.
Purple sea horses live on purple sea fans.
But here’s the mystery: Do they search for a coral that matches their color?
Or do they change their color to match the coral?
To explore that question you have to watch the process unfold. And no one had ever done that.
Until this year.
Biologists went to the Philippines and collected a mating pair of orange pygmy seahorses from a sea fan 80 feet below the surface.
They rushed them back to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.
And there, for the first time in an aquarium… The pygmy seahorses survived.
The scientists watched the male and female seahorses performing their daily courtship dance.
They saw baby seahorses pop out of their father’s brood pouch.
The babies all started out a dull brown color.
So scientists wanted to know what would happen if they provided a purple sea fan to the offspring of orange sea horses.
They got their answer: The babies turned purple.
They grew calcified bumps – called tubercles – to match the coral’s texture.
And there they stayed.
We humans tend to think of who we are as mostly fixed.
But in the ocean, identity can be a fluid and mysterious thing.
Next, Glasswing butterflies trick the light to hide in plain sight.
Ever wished you could be invisible?
Fade into the background.
Unnoticed.
Unseen.
For glasswing butterflies, the rainforests of South and Central America are full of hungry predators they’d like to hide from.
Some butterflies use cryptic camouflage to hide themselves by blending in with their surroundings.
Others use aposematism — vivid colors and patterns that warn predators they’re toxic.
Glasswings do have some warning markings. See that bright slash of white on black?
But that’s not their main defense.
Their transparent wings enable them to disappear into the background wherever they go.
Even while flying.
This little caterpillar is a baby glasswing and it’s already good at staying out of sight.
You can see through parts of its exoskeleton … offering a window into its most recent leafy meal.
That exoskeleton is made of a material called chitin that’s both strong and flexible.
In most insects, chitin is mixed up with pigments that give it color.
But some parts of the glasswing lack pigment entirely.
Once it’s had its fill, the caterpillar suspends itself under a leaf or stem.
It becomes a chrysalis.
Inside, it’s undergoing a metamorphosis.
About a week later, the transformation is complete.
An adult butterfly emerges.
It unfurls its delicate, new wings, revealing its window panes for the first time.
At the Nipam Patel Lab at UC Berkeley, researcher Aaron Pomerantz is studying how exactly the glasswing butterfly forms those transparent wings.
They’re made of that same clear chitin from when it was a caterpillar.
But in these wings, the chitin’s all stretched out — incredibly thin and stiff.
And that layer of chitin is exposed.
Other butterfly wings are covered in colorful overlapping scales that protect their wings from the elements.
The glasswing does have colored scales … on its body and the fragile edges of its wings.
But the scales on these window panes don’t look like scales at all, more like tiny hairs.
They’re skinny and spread out — they let the light pass by.
But having clear wings doesn’t help you hide if they’re shiny.
Zoom way in, past the hairs, and you’ll see the surface looks rough.
It’s covered in miniature towers made of wax.
They’re called nanopillars.
If the surface of the wing was smooth, light would bounce off of it.
The nanopillars are nature’s original anti-glare coating.
Researchers found that when they used chemicals to remove the nanopillars, the wings glimmered more.
While some other butterflies gleam in the sunlight, the glasswing reflects almost no light at all.
Glasswings excel at being dull.
And that helps them hide in plain sight.
What makes glasswings special isn’t their luster, but their ability to fade away.
