Why Does Every Animal Look Like This?

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In the race to survive, both predators and prey use visual tricks to get ahead. One nearly universal trick is countershading, a color pattern that helps animals erase their own shadows or blend into different backgrounds. It’s worked well enough that nature has produced this pattern over and over again, all over Earth, for at least tens of millions of years.

0:00 Why does every animal look like this?
0:52 A painter's big idea
1:49 Disappearing shadows
2:22 Testing the idea
3:48 Countershading everywhere!
6:10 What about water?
7:22 Making light to hide shadows
8:19 Outro

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This episode of Be Smart is licensed exclusively to YouTube.

[besmart]

Adds a whole different meaning to throwing shade, eh?

[laurendoe]

Looking only at the title of the video, I thought the question would be "Why do so many animals have a head, torso, and four appendages (with possibly a tail)?

[Frenchaboo]

You absolutely didn't have to make the example creature make little noises but you still did, and I appreciate it so much

[cumunist]

I thought this was about why every animal looked like a potato with ears

[SingABrightSong]

In birds, it's thought that the counter-shading helps them remain hidden in flight. The darker top hides them from falcons or other birds of prey that would swoop down from above, blending them in with the ground, while the lighter belly hides them from their own prey that watches for them, blending them in with the sky.

[Exquailibur]

I have a pet upside-down catfish which likes to spend its time upside-down as the name suggests, its got a dark belly and light back. So countershading obviously does something important because compared to its close relatives in the same genus that dont swim like weirdos its shading is reversed.

[liambohl]

Another potential function of countershading is to protect against sun damage on the most exposed parts of the body

[hettyscetty]

Counter shadowing definitely works. I have a dog and he is a Border Collie crossed with a Labrador and he has a gorgeous coat of mostly black fur with white paws and a white chest and belly. When he's in the garden at night, or lying in the hall at the top of the stairs with the light out you can only really see his paws because of that contrast and if he lies a certain way in the dark then it's literally impossible to see him at all and you wind up tripping up over him. So in conclusion it works for the domestic dog so they can confuse and trip up owners.

[seattlegrrlie]

Slightly different, but it blew me away how much my black cat can dissappear. That's a huge advantage to a shadow hiding pounce predator

[CulinaryPhysics]

Wow, I had no idea that countershading was so common in the animal kingdom! This video really opened my eyes to the amazing ways animals have adapted to their environments.

[Patmccalk]

4:54 countershading definitely does keep animals from being spotted, in fact, it makes their topsides one colour and their middles and bottoms others! Those aren’t spots!

[ShimmeringSpectrum]

Ever since I've learned kitefin sharks are the largest bioluminescent vertebrates, I've been fascinated by the concept of counterillumination. Was really neat to see it mentioned.

[xElMery]

Is it just me, or is the audio really crunchy?

[thejuvenoia]

"I promise there's two ducks in the photo."

Well, I guess people on the internet have told me worse lies.

[kalrandom]

In a lot of songbirds the female will blend in with the background, but the male will be brightly colored in order to draw away a predator.
As someone that has lived in a rural area most their life, and has Hunted quite a bit, I can understand how the color patterns do hide animals.
Great concept.

[Artyomthewalrus]

Fun fact, almost all of these designs were used in war to varying effects.

Counter shading is the most common, getting used on planes and ships (and similar concepts to the fish and birds, airplanes were often designed to blend in with the ground when seen from above, and sky from below). Virtually every variant of colours, whether just to eliminate shadows or to actually match colours with ground/sky were tried.

Counter illumination was used on some canadian warships, although it was used in ww2 in limited numbers. When it worked it could reduce the ships visibility by others up to 70%. Unfortunately it was expensive, complicated, and the lights were too fragile and often too slow to change. Allied victory in the battle of the atlantic lead to increased control over the atlantic, less risk for convoys (and hence less need for camoflauge), and she was already being obsoleted by sonar and aircraft carriers - all of those things combining to mean it wasn't worth the money to continue development.

America did briefly experiment with counter illumination of aircraft after the canadian project fell apart. And although it was promising, again radar meant that it was obsolete, and it was dropped.

Zebra esque ships were designed to make judging their size, speed, and direction more difficult to make hitting them more difficult. However, the efficacy was limited at best, and made them more visible and more likely to get destroyed at worst.

[fecchitheillustrator]

When i had to draw an underwater piece i actually realized how hard it is do paint noticeable fishes. I have searched online but most of the fishes are actually blend in with the ocean so well its merely different from painting sea with different reflections.

[kid]

I think something is up with the audio? It is really popping and snapping for me. Every other video I have watched today hasn't had this issue.

[Macieks]

Interesting idea. I've noticed countershading in fish as it was more obvious that it helps blend in against any background but I've never thought about it in land animals. At the beginning I thought it would be the same explanation but surely animals on land don't have predators that look at them from below or above so that threw me for a loop.

[hamsandwich]

I stumbled upon countershading on my own while drawing. I was coloring a animal with a lighter belly and was getting frustrated that when I added the shadows, the belly and back were the same color.