I'm standing in plain sight right in front of you.

I'm wearing colors and a pattern that match my background.

So even though I'm here, you may not be able to see me.

But now you do.

The only thing that's changed is my color.

This is how nature works!

Theme Music Music Color can make a big difference for living things, and it is used in lots of different ways.

Any coloration that helps animals survive and have more young is a kind of structural adaptation.

Coloration and pattern that match a background hide an organism from prey and predators.

Great contrast in coloration can help an animal announce its presence to mates or rivals.

It also helps animals with chemical defenses and their imitators to warn off predators.

Coloration that fools an animal, predators, or prey is called deceptive coloration.

Some kinds of deceptive coloration help organisms blend into the background and some kinds make them look like something else.

Deceptive coloration that helps an organism blend into its background is called camouflage.

Crab spiders are hunting spiders that have changeable camouflage.

They take about ten days to change color to match the flowers where they hide.

If the flower is white, they turn white.

If the flower is yellow, they turn yellow.

Some animals are camouflaged with dark colors on their tops and light on their undersides.

This kind of coloration is called counter shading.

Animals with counter shading blend in with the dark when you look down at them, and blend in with the sky when you look up at them.

Organisms that use another type of deceptive coloration look like or mimic other things.

Mimicry often helps to protect the mimic from predators.

The poisonous coral snake and the harmless kingsnake look a lot alike, so predators avoid the kingsnake as if it was a coral snake.

When organisms use color to be noticed, it's called advertising coloration.

It stands out, like this jacket.

The bright colors of flowers are advertising coloration that attracts pollinators like bees and hummingbirds.

Some plant berries turn a color that advertises their ripeness to birds and other animals.

Once inside, the berry seeds take a free ride.

When the seeds pass through in the droppings, they're able to grow in a new place.

This process spreads the seeds, and the plant, far and wide.

Many male birds are brightly colored to attract mates.

Male cardinals with the brightest red feathers are usually more successful in finding mates.

The female cardinals’ duller colors help camouflage them in their nest.

Advertising coloration also warns animals away.

The ladybird beetle’s bright orange wings with black spots warn predators of its awful taste.

Whether animals or plants need to be seen or they need to hide, coloration is important.

It's so important that it can mean the difference between having a lot of offspring or a few.

It's one of the easiest kinds of adaptation to see.

There must be an animal around here at the Nature Center that's a great example of coloration.

Let's go ask Dave.

Music Hi, Dave.

Hi, Patrice.

Whad do you have the great horned owl for?

the great horned Ah, the great horned owl’s just in for his daily weighing.

So now he's going back out to where he lives.

It seems like this is a good example of coloration for a mini talk.

Ah, great horned owls are great for color.

When you look at those big yellow eyes, they stand out.

But you know the other colors are a lot more subtle, but they may be even more important for the great horned owl.

When great horned owls are, of course, roosting at, during the daytime, their coloration is important for their camouflage.

You know, during the night they may go out and leave the forest and hunt over orchards and open meadows, even marshes.

But during the daytime they come back to the forest and they sit in the old tree usually and sometimes hunker up really close to the trunk of the tree.

And when you look at the back.

Can you see the colors there?

Yup!

It almost looks like the bark of the tree.

Yeah.

And if you're trying to hang out during the day and get some sleep, you want to blend in with your surroundings, Would you call the owl’s camouflage deceptive coloration?

Any animal that uses camouflage is trying to deceive a potential predator.

So they're trying to look like something else, or not look like anything at all, so that the predator might ignore them.

Why does this owl will have feathery horns?

Well, the great horned owl gets its name from those little pops of feathers on top.

But they aren't horns, as you indicated.

They're really feathers.

That, it actually to enhance their camouflage.

Because when they're roosting in a tree, you know, these might actually break up their outline, much like you might see broken sticks, you know, sticking out of a trunk of a tree or a branch of a tree and make them look less like an owl and more like the background that you see, yeah.

So they roost during the day and during the night they hunt for prey.

Great horned owls have great hearing, great eyesight.

They have kind of a poor sense of smell, though.

But that may actually be an advantage when it comes to hunting another nocturnal animal that most predators avoid: the skunk.

Music Yo Don’t stop Striped skunk’s fur is black with a white stripe that usually begins as a triangle on top of the head and breaks into two stripes on the skunk’s back.

Although the striped pattern is different on every skunk, it serves as a warning sign to predators to avoid them.

Skunks lack speed and climbing ability, but have a unique, smelly, and sometimes painful defense against predators.

They can spray a horrible, smelly musk at attackers.

When a skunk is threatened, it first tries to scurry away.

If it can't escape, the skunk will try to frighten its enemy off by raising its tail, turning its back, and stamping its front feet.

If that doesn't work, the skunk will squirt out two streams of fluid from scent glands under its tail.

Check it out A skunk can spray as far as 12 feet and as many as eight times in a row.

But once is usually enough.

The spray, besides smelling terrible, can sting the eyes of its attacker.

Striped skunks are found only in North America, from central Canada to northern Mexico.

They live along the edges of forest, grasslands, and farmlands, often near water.

Skunks are nocturnal and sleep during the day in underground burrows.

Skunks don't usually dig their own burrows.

They'll look for abandoned burrows made by other animals, or they'll find a natural hollow under a tree or a building.

Striped skunks are omnivores and eat lots of different things.

They have long front claws they use to dig for food.

At dusk, they began looking for food like grasshoppers, beetles and other insects, mice, voles and ground nesting birds, and turtle eggs.

Fruit, grains, berries and vegetables make up part of their diet.

They also are scavengers, and they'll eat the remains of dead animals.

What a skunk eats depends on what they can find, and their diet changes with the seasons.

Skunks mate in the late winter or early spring.

Females usually give birth to 5 or 6 young.

Baby skunks are blind and deaf at birth.

They'll stay in the den for about six weeks to nurse.

Once they're weaned, they’ll leave the den and follow their mother and hunt for food.

After about 3 or 4 months, they're able to survive on their own.

A skunk’s contrasting black and white markings and strong odor are two adaptations that help them survive and fill an important role in their environment.

An animal like the skunk is easy to spot, but it takes skill and a good eye to really see the natural world that surrounds us.

And who knows that better than naturalist and photographer John Green.

Marrissa and Von are going to spend the day with him, shooting in the great outdoors.

Music Hi, John.

Hi, John.

Hi Von and Marrissa.

How are you?

Good.

How are you?

Okay, fine.

What a nice day.

Oh, this is a nice day.

What are you looking at here?

Well, you can actually look through.

I was photographing that red tree primarily.

Oh, yeah.

Red maple.

What makes that picture stand out more than others?

Well, the red tree, the red maple up against the tree with all the green leaves, gives you a lot of contrast.

Behind the red tree, you have the blue sky and some white clouds, and that gives you a lot of different things going on in one picture In, instead of being uniform, it's a lot of contrast so its much more interesting than it would be if everything was the same.

Music So, John, what things do you look for when you take a picture?

Well, you look for things that stand out from all the other things around them.

Sometimes I want to show how colors blend together.

I get the idea of camouflage.

Then I look for things, pictures that don't have a lot of contrast.

Right.

Yeah.

It always depends on what you're after.

Music (inaudible) these rocks?

This gets lost in the background.

What are you trying to say to your viewers when you take a picture?

I guess what I really try to get across is the beauty of our environment.

And to realize that every action they take has a reaction in the environment.

Do you rather photograph plants or animals, or do you have any preference over what you photograph?

I photograph whatever's in front of me, and I try to take the pictures without disturbing the critters.

Well, put another way, with a minimum amount of disturbance to whatever I’m photographing.

And when I teach classes or teach lessons, I try to teach my students the same thing.

You're not there to destroy the environment.

You’re there to take pictures of it so that other people can see your pictures and they, too, can gain a healthy respect for the things that you're photographing.

Well, you want to take some more pictures?

Yeah.

Let’s go find something Why don’t we look over this way.

The sun would be behind us.

Yeah.

Let's see if we can find.

You can see the colors on the far ridge there.

Music Clouds.

Very good light.

Music What have we learned today?

Coloration is an adaptation that helps animals and plants survive.

Coloration can be used to attract other animals or warn them away.

Deceptive coloration is used to fool predators.

Camouflage helps living things blend into their background.

Advertising coloration helps an animal or plant get noticed.

Now you know how nature works!

Music Theme Music Major funding for Nature Works was provided by American Honda Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by Alice Freeman Muchnic, Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust, Cogswell Benevolent Trust, the Finisterre Fund, Greater Piscataqua Community Foundation, Morgridge Family Trust, the Natural Areas Wildlife Fund, Rawson L. Wood.

(animal noises)