1) Discuss what your text has to say about camouflage (or a closely related topic).
2) Go to the following web page and follow your interests as they relate to camouflage.
http://www.bobolinkbooks.com/Index/Home.html
Discuss the parts of the site you visited, the information you found, and how it relates to Sensation & Perception
3) Find another site on the web that deals with camouflage
Provide the url.
Discuss the parts of the site you visited, the information you found, and how it relates to Sensation & Perception.
4) List 3 questions you have about camouflage, how the eye detects objects in the real world, how expectations might influence the detection of objects, etc.
1) A closely related topic that my textbook discussed is the Gestalt theory of perception. Gestalt psychology is founded on some basic principles of how we organize what we see. A sentence that helps to break down Gestalt psychology according to my text is “the whole is different from the sum of its parts.” Our perception of one stimulus will vary according to perceptions of other stimulus around it. I thought this related nicely to camouflage which concept is that you blend into the background because of what you are covering yourself with. We don’t perceive individual stimuli if it’s integrated into the total perception of an entire stimuli.
2) I explored part of the website that dealt with “dazzle camouflage.” This is the painting of things like ships to appear mish mashed to make it hard to distinguish its size and shape by enemies. The pictures of the ships shown were so strange to look at. There were lines and shapes covering them, and it was hard to tell exactly how the ship was shaped and where the parts ended. This was difficult viewing it in perfect conditions I cannot imagine the difficult if you were viewing it through a periscope. It relates to perception because the colors, and graphics on an object can completely change how we perceive it. The object’s structure is the same, but our eyes and mind cannot make sense of it if we are thrown curveballs like black and white stripes because it goes against our expectations.
3) For this section I did some research on chameleons. I think they are very interesting in how they change their coloration to blend in with their surroundings and protect themselves. The first site is something I found fun. It’s a picture that contains a camouflaged chameleon, and shows just how good these animals are at hiding themselves. I had to stare at the picture for quite some time before I could find the animal, and even that had to look at the posts to make sure I was correct.
http://www.eyje.com/pictures/animals/Amazing_Camouflage_Find_The_Chameleon_in_20_Seconds_PIC_
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngexplorer/0210/articles/mainarticle.html
The second site is from National Geographic. It gives all the basic facts about chameleons including why they change to how these little animals change. Although it may be to protect themselves, scientist think chameleons also change to reflect temperature, mood, and if they are in direct sunlight. The website also gives examples of other animals that use camouflage techniques to hide themselves for safety, so it is not just humans that have figured this technique out. Chameleon’s color changing behavior is directed from their brains, which sends signals to the chromatophores to change the chameleon’s skin. This relates to the class because not only does the chameleon utilize camouflage, but also uses it’s perceptions of the environment to adapt their skin. Must like our own brain makes sense of what we take in through our visual senses, animals also rely on their brain to react to the stimuli the eyes provide. Sensations of the environment temperature and the chameleon’s mood can impact his coloration for the day.
4) When did camouflage first become recognized by humans? What are some other interesting camouflage techniques used by animals and humans besides coloration? How does our brain process camouflage if we are aware we are being tricked? Does it differ from regular perceptions such as being more discriminative in viewing objects?
1.My textbook mentions camouflage in explaining how movement provides information that helps us segregate figure from ground. The example it gives is a camouflaged bird that remains invisible as long as it is still but that becomes instantly visible as soon as it moves. Movement segregates figure (the animal) from ground (the rest of the environment).
2.I went to the Dazzle Camouflage webpage; background matching makes it hard to see a figure against a background (like mentioned in the text). Then dazzle camouflage is when a single thing appears to be mishmash of unrelated components. Dazzle camouflage is found throughout the natural world. The term “dazzle painting” was made in 1917 and it was designed to counter torpedo attacks by German submarines. It was Norman Wilkinson’s idea to apply geometric shapes to the surface of the ships; making it harder to aim at them through a periscope from a distance. Since the targeted ship was moving and because the torpedoes took time to arrive at the ship, the submarine gunner had to figure the speed and direction of the ship and them aim ahead of the target.
Another webpage I went to was Gestalt and Camouflage. This also talked about the wartime use of camouflage. Abbott Thayer discovered countershading, a variant of natural camouflage in which the upper surfaces of an animal’s body are colored dark with the undersides lighter. Countershading is the inverse of shading, when a countershaded animal is observed in the wild; its white undersides counteract the effects of the overhead sun. As a result, it appears flat and insubstantial making it less visible as a solid. Thayer believed that all animal coloration, even the most brightly colored patterns functions as concealing coloration and whenever a creature is readily seen it is simply because it is being observed outside of its natural environment.
3.I went to a website that explains how animal camouflage works:
http://animals.howstuffworks.com/animal-facts/animal-camouflage1.htm
The fact that animals have to increase their chance of survival explains why animals have evolved a number of special adaptations that help them find food and keep them from being the food. One most widespread adaptation is natural camouflage. Camouflage develops differently depending on the physiology and behavior of the animal. An animal’s environment is often the most important factor in what camouflage looks like. An example of this would be matching the background of its surroundings. This relates to the class because the animal has to use its perception of color to determine what color to be or what environment matches their appearance. The animals rely on what stimuli their eye sees and then the brain has to interrupt with the eye saw to determine if they are camouflaged or not.
4.How come we can’t see past camouflage with our depth perception of different textures? When did humans first realize that animals use camouflage? Is color the only way to use camouflage?
1. My text covers impossible objects in chapter five. It explains that eye movements are needed to see every part of a scene because a single fixation wouldn’t allow you too see the whole picture. These eye movements are also used to create a mental map of the scene so it can be pieced together. The text shows the example of an image. There is what looks to be a three pronged shape if you fix your eyes in one place. If you look around at the abject you can see it’s not a complete object; it’s an impossible object. We only notice that after looking over the object.
2. I visited the Dazzle web site. On this site they define camofleurs as artists who use blending and background matching along with mimicry to create hidden things. It then explains that disruptive or dazzle camouflage is the most effective. It’s where a single object looks like a mismatch of components. Dazzle camouflage is what was used on battle and merchant ships to make it harder to take aim at them through a periscope. I also went to their blog and read some of their posts. I found it hard to understand what they were talking about. This relates to what we have been learning about object construction. If the eye has to move around to see a whole object and then construct it things can be hidden. Especially when they are hidden by some sort of camouflage the eye tells the brain there isn’t anything there when there really is.
3. I found a site that has pictures of animals that use camouflage to survive from predators. Some of them are hard to see and others would have been better if they weren’t so zoomed in on the animals. The grasshopper blends in with the leaves; the snake that they show it’s hard to see his head from the rest of his body. When you read the captions it’s easier to understand how they can hide and stay hidden. Not only can you not see the snakes’ head very well its colors are easily matched with leaves. This relates to perception because not only is it hard for us to see these animals in some areas it’s their livelihood at stake. This could lead into a big Darwin explanation about survival but I’m not a big Darwin fan so I’m not going there. It’s a matter of how other animals and predators perceive them and how they can see them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/11/amazing-camouflage-animal_n_316008.html?slidenumber=0
4. How is a Deer eye different from that of a human that they can’t see hunters as well? Is camouflage necessary for hunters or does it really make a difference to the animals? Is camouflage more effective to an animal than a human because ours eyes are different?
1.) My book didn’t have any information related to the topic of camouflage. I decided to take the next step and look for related items that dealt with the site that I looked at dealing with the Gestalt Theory and Cubic objects and camouflage. What I came up with was the idea of shading and shadows and the types of shadows used. This can be seen in a lot of artwork and pictures available today as well as during the World Wars (which is a lot of what the site talked about). The book talks about shading being used to give a picture or art piece a natural kind of look. As you know, light can’t go through most objects, but since light travels in straight lines it gives the objects depth. This can be seen in an objects reflected in the sunlight. The object facing the sunlight or light is going to be brighter than the surfaces facing other directions of the light source. The objects facing away from the light will be seen as darker or shaded. This gives the observer a sense of the shape and overall object that they are looking at. The shading that defines the shape of the object is called the attached shadow. This gives us the sense that the object we’re looking at is 3 dimensional. The cast shadow is showing the objects shape, or reflection, in the path of the light source. The attached shadow and the cast shadow are similar in that they both show the brightness of the shadow and the surface surrounding the object. The difference in where the light source is coming from. To best understand the two types I will give two examples to help myself better understand the two. An attached shadow is almost exactly how it sounds. The light source is positioned in such an angle that the object’s shadow is directly attached to the object. So If I was standing in the sunlight and look down to see my shadow (starting at my feet and continuing outward). The cast shadow is when the sunlight is positioned in a way that the shadow is not connected to the object. So if a bird was flying above me, the sun being above it, it would cast a shadow on the ground. I would not see the bird, but just its shadow.
2.) The site talked a lot the idea of shadowing was created in 1912 during “military history”. Artists trying to portray natural history through their pieces soon realized the idea of countershadowing. Countershadowing is the inverse idea of shading. It is created when artists create 3 dimensional images on a piece of paper by coloring parts darker on the underside of the object and lighter towards the top. It talks about how the position of the sunlight and how that is used to show the shape of the object and where the darkest parts are versus the lighter parts. This related to Sensation and Perception because it deals with how we look at objects. It shows the shape of the object and gives the image volume. It allows us to see the actual shape of the image and gives us a sense of what we are really looking at. It also allows us to see where the sun is coming from and how that affects the object’s color and shape.
3.) http://hea-www.harvard.edu/ECT/the_book/Chap1/Chapter1.html. This site gives an idea as to how we calculate the sunlight and how that affects the objects that we are trying to perceive. As we have already talked about, sources of light show in straight lines (example: sunlight). Another thing talked about in this site is that there is movement in what we are looking at. This can be due to the light source moving or the object itself moving. Almost all objects form shadows if they absorb the light source of the light striking them. This relates to what we have talked about so far because it deals with the objects absorbing the light source. It talks about shading of the objects and how that relates to how we determine where to shade the image.
4.) Three Questions:
1—Are there any objects that don’t absorb the light source and therefore don’t put off a shadow?
2—Does the amount of sunlight have anything to do with the amount of shading or shadows that the image puts off?
3—What do color blind people see when observing the objects? What if they can’t see shades of gray? Do they see the shadows and shading or just see nothing at all?
1) My text explains camouflage as the art of getting your features to group with the features of the environment so as to persuade an observer that your features do not form a perceptual group of their own. It shows three different photos of different animals camoulaged into their background. It took me a second to find them becuase they blend so well into their environment that it really is hard to tell that they are even there.
2) I went the the Dazzle Camouflage link on this website. It discussed how camouflage is part of our visual perception and how it uses certain features to make certain perceptions that objects do not seem to appear to be there when they are actually just camouflaged into their environmental background. I enjoyed looking at some of the pictures they showed on this site and looking for the objects that were camouflaged into the background. It was kind of like a game.
3) The website I chose to look at was http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/11/amazing-camouflage-animal_n_316008.html I chose this website because it specifically disucsses animals and why and how they camouflage into their background. It discussed how animals use camouflage in order to catch prey, hide from predators, and in order to find a little peace and quiet in their lives. My favorite part of this website was the different pictures it showed of animals camouflaging. It showed animals such as grass hoppers, polar bears, snakes, turtles, and sea creatures such as fish. It was fun to try to find the animals and it surprised me at how much they actually can blend into their environment, some of them were actually very difficult to spot. This relates to sensation and perception because these animals use their camouglage abilities to trick our perceptions and the perceptions of their prey and predators in order to survive.
4) 1. If animals can use camouflage in order to survive do they also do the opposite in order to be seen instead of hidden?
2) Why are there only certain animals that use camouflage?
3) How is the perception of animals and their ability to camouflage from other animals different from their ability to camouflage from humans? Do animals perceive other animals differently than humans perceive animals in their enviornment?
1). My book didn't have a lot of information on camouflage but in chapter five it had a lot of information that I could relate back to camouflage. The first is The inverse projection problem. This states that ambguity occurs because a particular image on the retina can be caused by an infinite number of different objects. Which means our eyes can often play tricks on us. This applys to the devils triangle in our reader. From one angle it looks like a triangle but in reality there is no way it can be. Next the book talks about the hidden objects problem which occurs anytime one object obscures part of another object. Like in those hidden object computer games where you have to look really closely to find the objects because parts of them are hidden by other objects. The book also talks about Gestalt Theory which deals heavily with perception.
2)I visited the "dazzle Camouflage" site. This site talked about the idea of painting ships and submarines in mishmashed geometric patterns to throw off opposing submarines trying to target them during wartime. It is hard to view these ships just looking at the pictures I am sure it was even more difficult to do through a periscope I imagine that this tactic was successful in making targeting more difficult. This tactic utilized perception in many ways but one could be the inverse perception problem. It is hard to view this object exactly as it is because there are so many retinal images that could be happening here.
3)http://animals.howstuffworks.com/animal-facts/11-animals-that-use-camouflage1.htm
I picked this site because I have always been really interested in animals and thier camouflage. It is natures built in defense mechanism. This site talks about 11 different animals and thier unique camouflage system. This is another interesting use of the inverse perception problem but also the hidden objects problem. These animals are born to be easily obscured by thier natural environments. Whether that be a lizard that can change colors and sit partially behind a leaf and be virtually invisible to predator or a leapord that can stalk thier prey at night and be virtually invisible with thier black coat.
4) Do we as humans have a camouflage similar to that of animals?
Do animals have the same retinal image problems that we have?
Does the inverse perception problem hinder us or is it an interesting asset to our extensive visual abilities?
1) The E.B. Goldstein text (2007) discusses the way that movement is important to perception in terms of the predator-prey relationship. The text states that all animals have the ability to perceive motion, but not all have good depth perception or precise color vision. Therefore; movement perception is crucial to survival, and thus some animals are able to utilize this by remaining very still when confronted by a predator – even humans such as when confronted by a rattlesnake or a bear. Movement would more often prove far more dangerous than holding very still. And in this way, animals utilize the lack of movement as camouflage.
2) At the site http://www.bobolinkbooks.com/Index/Home.html, I too focused on the dazzle camouflage utilized by the military. This form of camouflage was essentially paint applied to the outside of a ship in a design that would bewilder an observer looking at the ship through a periscope, so that they would be less able to accurately calculate the distance and motion of the ship for the purposes of accurately firing upon it, thus enhancing the chances that the camouflaged ship would safely make its way through the water during the war.
The way that this form of camouflage relates to Sensation and Perception can be best summed metaphorically (and somewhat literally) by a George Steiner quote found at the site: “At every level, from brute camouflage to poetic vision, the linguistic capacity to conceal, misinform, leave ambiguous, hypothesize, invent, is indispensable to the equilibrium of human consciousness”. I think this quote is saying that camouflage is indispensible to human consciousness. This would imply that camouflage occurs on every level - both disguising ourselves from predators, and deluding ourselves with mind short-cuts such as inattentional blindness, for a more efficient way of processing sensory input. The ability to use camouflage is both an external and internal sensory component of human survival.
3) I am fascinated with insects – and particularly “stick bugs”. Not sure why, I just think they are really cool! I found this site: http://www.brisbaneinsects.com/brisbane_hoppers/Goliath.htm
There are some great pictures and explanations of the Goliath Stick Insect – including the fact that its eggs look like seeds. Amazing!
As stick insects relate to sensation and perception, I did another search and found this hunting gear site which had some interesting and informative viewpoints about sticks and how the use of sticks as found in nature relate to lower perception in the environment, which I imagine you would want if you were a hunter:
http://www.naturalgear.com/science.asp?Section=Science
Furthermore, the stick insect, and camouflage gear relates to how perceptual rules govern how we pay attention to relevant and expected details in our environment, while we pretty much ignore the rest (which is generally more efficient).
4) 3 Questions:
1 – Do some individuals pay more attention to environmental details, and does this relate to certain disorders such as ADHD and/or autism?
2 – In regard to one, would a lower stimulus environment assist learning as it relates to sensation and perception for those individuals? (There are probably studies on this).
3 – In human evolution, would color blind individuals have been at a greater disadvantage, and if so, why does the trait carry forward so commonly today (or could it have served some advantage?)?
1) The text did not have anything specific in about camouflage that I could find, so I decided to look further into camouflage and find out more about it. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines camouflage in three ways 1) the disguising especially of military equipment or installations with paint, nets, or foliage 2) concealment by means of disguise and 3) behavior or artifice designed to deceive or hide. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of camouflage is the military and their uniforms. Their uniforms are different colors of the earth ranging from dark greens to dark browns. They are used to be concealed or hidden from their ‘enemies’. The next thing that comes to mind are different animals like grasshoppers and polar bears that blend in with their surroundings to keep them safe from predators and help them find food. To me camouflage basically is a display of colors that tricks the eye. So, I decided to look at the nature of colors in my text. The text says there are three primary and interacting dimensions that are combined and effect our perception of color: hue, saturation, and lightness. The text explains that these three components effect how we see anything at a given moment. If there isn’t much light we will see the color or the hue much differently than if there was a lot of light on that object. Camouflage also reminded me of simultaneous color contrast, which means that the appearance of the color can be changed because another color is present at the same time. If the military uniforms were just made up of dark green that would be a completely different effect than all of the colors together, and the camouflage colors need to change depending on the environment that the soldiers are in. The soldier would be more easily seen if they didn’t tweak the uniforms to be made up of a bunch of different colors. Same with animals, tigers have their stripes to help them blend into the jungle; if the tiger was all orange then he would be very noticeable to any predators. I did more research on camouflage and found that in the 18th and early 19th century armies tended to have more colorful uniforms. It wasn’t until 1857 when the British were in India that they were forced to dye their white uniforms to earthy tones such as khaki because of all the casualties.
2) I went to the website and the first thing I looked at was Gestalt Theory, Cubism and Camouflage. This article talked about the relatedness of Gestalt’s Theory and Camouflage, especially military camouflage. It was a little surprising, because I relate camouflage to military uniforms and didn’t know that this article was going speak of the relationship between the two. Gestalt approach emphasizes that we perceive objects as well-organized, whole structures rather than as separated, isolated parts. The article talks further about the Gestalt theory being born in 1880 and cubism both emerged in the years that preceded WWI. In WWI camouflage was magnified, because of the use of airplanes. The people who dealt with camouflage were called camoufleurs and they were usually artists of one kind or another. This later took off and all of the armies were using this. Abbot Thayer an American artist was very interested in camouflage in both animals and how artist use counter shading to produce the same effect as camouflage. Thayer described camouflage as “the employment of strong arbitrary patterns of color which tend to conceal the wearer by destroying his apparent continuity to surface”. This heavily relates to Gestalt’s Laws of grouping. There are five laws of grouping: Law of proximity, law of similarity, law of good continuation, law of closure, and law of common fate. For example, the law of proximity states that objects near each other tend to be seen as a unit. This is a perfect example of camouflage and especially military camouflage. The soldiers will often paint the ends of the guns the color of tree branches so when they are sticking out the eye will see it as a tree branch instead of the end of a gun. Although the relatedness of gestalt theory and camouflage is just a suggestion and not agreed upon by all I think that the two are very much alike. I also looked at the Dazzle Camouflage page and found that extremely interesting. The way the painted boats and the way they described camouflage was very different and fun.
3) Recently the US military has changed their “pattern” of camouflage. This new uniform is called the Army Combat Uniform of the ACU. http://www.slate.com/id/2106359 This is an article written by Tom Vanderbilt discussing the ACU’s. The military did years of study and developed thousands of prototype uniforms and unveiled the new uniform in 2005. Tom states that this uniform is less restricting than previous military uniforms and has less upkeep. It is not necessary to shine up the boots or dry clean the uniforms as it has been in recent years. The whole idea behind this uniform is making a uniform that would be invisible to foes but visible to comrades. This new uniform is “visible only to those equipped to see it”. This pattern is entirely digital, is pixilated, and bit-mapped on a computer then printed directly onto nylon. Here is a picture of the ACU http://www.recon-tactical.com/images/ACU%202.jpg. I found this website and this information very interesting, because of the research that was done. The whole idea behind this uniform had to be research by people who are experts in perception. The idea of being hidden from your enemy but visible to your army is very interesting. Also, these uniforms are supposed to be effective in many different types of environments such as deserts and jungles at the same time. Also, these uniforms are designed to be camouflage not only when the soldier is still but also when he is moving. I would be more interested to find out about the research and who was conducting the research but the article didn’t state anything about that, and I couldn’t find any information on the web.
4) 1. How effective is camouflage in direct light and how do researchers make up for this?
2. What kind of researcher was done on ACU’s and was the pattern made by a computer, or made through trial and errors? 3. How does the ACU’s account for movement and how was that worked into the camouflage?
1) Chapter 5 in my textbook talks about the stimulus on the receptors is ambiguous. The ambiguity occurs because a particular image on the retina can be caused by an infinite number of different objects, which is called the inverse projection problem. It shows an environmental sculpture by Thomas Macaulay. when viewed from exactly the right vantage point, the stones appear to be arranged in a circle. Viewing the stones from the ground floor reveals a truer indication of their configuration. According to structuralism, a number of sensations adds up to create our perception as a whole.
2) I decided to learn more about how form functions: on esthetics and gestalt history. The terms esthetic and anesthetic are closely related. It is referred not just to works of art, but to all sensory input. Esthetic quality wasn't a question of prettieness or pleasantness, but of vividness and congency. Esthetic standards are subjective; there is no reliable critical gauge, and formal issues have leaned towards what is called "taste." It is now seen as a synonym for any artistic "point of view." Anesthetic still means the partial or total loss of sensation, but it almost always refers to chemically-induced anesthesia. Only rarely does it men a non-chemical loss of sensation. Meditative and ecstatic trances are anesthetic mental states. Those who engage in them experience a lack of connection with sensory stimuli or a state of
3)No matter how much I learn about animal camouflage, I am still amazed by the pictures and how they are able to mimic backgrounds. Prey animals use it to avoid being found, and predators use it to keep from being seen by a prey. The color change can follow changing seasons, for example: when winter brings lots of snow; in the far north, animals often have white fur or feathers in winter. When spring comes and melts the snow, the white fur and feathers fall out. Pigments in the skin cells change. When new feathers and fur grow in, they match the new color or pattern of the landscape.
The color change can also happen within minutes. Frogs, toads and some fish can change the colors of their skin or scales to match a surface that's near them.
Many animals use a kind of camouflage called counter-shading. These animals have bodies that are dark on top and light on the bottom. Mice, white-tailed dear, Canada geese, otters and largemouth bass are a few examples. When sunlight shines on an animal's darker colors, it makes them look lighter and vice versa. The two areas of color blend together when seen from a distance.
Camouflage can go beyond body color. It can involve body shape or movement. Insects often use a kind of camouflage called imitation. The shape of their bodies, along with their coloring, makes them look like other things (for example: other insects, plants, bird poop, etc).
4) Why are we not aware of humans containing this camouflage the same as animals and insects have? It is just not as drastic as other species?
Do animals (that cannot see color) see obvious texture camouflage or is it less obvious since there is no color?
Is the perception of camouflage the same or different in human eyes verses animal eyes?
1) While I agree that camouflage follows many of the principles of Gestalt Psychology, there are two ideas that I feel are the most closely linked to the concept of camouflage. The first is a term the text calls common fate. The law of common fate states that visual elements will tend to group together if they're moving in a similar manner. The second term discussed in our textbook is synchrony. Synchrony is a grouping principle very similar to the law of common fate in the regards that it is based on group movement, but synchrony differs in the fact that synchrony doesn't require items move in the same direction. the grouping principle of synchrony states that items in a set change tend to be grouped together even though they may not necessarily be moving in the same direction. An example in the book is of a snake slithering in the glass and sun glinting off the scales. The grass is being parted and moved by the snake. This is a great example of how camouflage can be used by other people/animals to use concepts of Gestalt Psychology to hide themselves in plain sight.
2) I very much enjoyed the page on Dazzle Camouflage. The use of geometric shapes painted on a submarine to distract enemies is ingenious. It makes the submarine seem out of place because you're visually experiencing something that isn't expected so your mind doesn't register what exactly it is. It is also more difficult to target for the same reason. This concept was years ahead of its time. Dazzle Camouflage was developed in 1917 and is allegedly far more effective than typical camouflage.
3) http://ellerbruch.nmu.edu/classes/cs255w03/cs255students/nsovey/P6/P6.html
I've always had a personal interest in animal defense mechanisms. One of the most popular defense mechanisms for animals is changing their appearance in order to ward off predators. One notable portion of this URL has much to do with the Gestalt grouping principle of synchrony. A school of fish will use disruptive coloration and swim in a dense group in one direction to make enemies think it is actually just one fish instead of many. Some animals use counter shading to ward off predators. This involves appearing to blend in to multiple situations at once. This is more commonly used by fish and other aquatic animals, they will appear light from the bottom and dark from the top so predators are unable to see them due to lighting issues.
4) Why are these survival adaptations not present in the human race?
Are there ways to train oneself to be more receptive to camouflage tactics?
What other effective ways of disguising oneself? (animals)
1) My text does not talk about camouflage but it does mention some related concepts. A part of my text talks about primal sketch. This section begins by explaining vision in the same way we discussed it in class this past week. We only see a small region of a whole image. This was compared to a partly solved jigsaw puzzle. Our brain fills in the gaps. The full primal sketch was partially described with two constraints. The first says that matter is coherent so that symbols that are close together in the image will usually belong to the same object. The second symbols that share a common descriptive attribute will usually have a common physical cause. This means that symbols with similar shape or texture might be more likely to be processed in the same. This kind of grouping may lead us to see additional image properties like texture gradients. Texture gradients can be useful in recognizing depth or object boundaries in instances where the image property changes abruptly from place to place like in camouflage.
2) The part of the website I looked at was Abbott Thayer's camouflage demonstrations. One part of this page talked about countershading which is an aspect of animal coloration. Thayer said that many animals have white or lighter undersides is to avoid prey. the white cancels out the shading that comes from the sun and makes it seem like the animal is a still object.
Another topic covered was disruptive camouflage. This is also called high difference or dazzle camouflage. Thayer is the person who proposed that solid colored uniforms were not good camouflage. He came up with the idea of having a disruptive pattern on uniforms.
The last thing I found interesting on that page is coincident disruption. This is where the figure is broken apart and it blends in with the background. This is commonly seen in nature and examples are given such as snakes blending in with the forest floor. This part is interesting because we see that camouflage occurs naturally all of the time and we have probably seen examples of this in our lives.
This page relates to perception because it shows us that we do not always see the entirety of what we are looking at. Many things can fool us into thinking we are seeing something other than what is really there.
3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC0zOLqYnRg
Like many of my classmates, I am very interested in animal camouflage. I searched YouTube and found a short video on underwater creature camouflage. I think many people will find this interesting because it seems most of us know more about land animals than aquatic animals. I found this video fascinating. Like other animals, most of these animals use camouflage to survive. These creatures can not only blend in with their surroundings, they can actually change their appearance to match their surroundings. My favorite was the shape-shifting octopus. This octopus can actually see their environment and use their suckers to pull up texture from the surrounding area to blend in!
4) Why do some animals have better camouflage techniques than others?
Do people not have the same camouflage techniques because we don't need them to survive?
Animals and bugs can camouflage themselves from us but if we knew what to look for, would we be able to detect them more easily?
1- My text did not specifically discuss camouflage, but there was information on the different gestalt theories that tie in well with the topic. Both the text and the website article made the point that in vision, the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts. Another chapter on movement discusses the role movement plays in detecting objects. If an object blends with it's surroundings we may not be able to differentiate it until we detect it's movements. This is how many animals use camouflage in the real world.
2- I looked at the stuff on embedded figures on the website. I think it's interesting to see how we may see a picture, and not see the parts that make it up. There's a picture posted of a woman sitting at a table and you have to sit and really pick out where she is, her clothing matches the background so well I stared for quite sometime trying to figure out where the outline of her body is. It was really neat. I liked the discussion the paper had on different types of architecture that involves these sorts of patterns or underlying designs that are like some of the embedded figure games discussed. In class we have discussed how much of our perception of the world and depth perceptions are contingent on the lines we see around us... the sidewalk, the lines of buildings and windows, even the horizon. some of this architecture is designed to integrate these patterns and lines between floor, ceiling, windows, walls, rails, etc., and for the most part the intricacies go unnoticed on a conscious level. these are embedded figures in our everyday lives. And I like that the author is from UNI and talks about the art building here on campus, which is a really neat building... we should take a class field trip there and have some real visual fun!
3- http://thehumanodyssey.typepad.com/neurodiversity_the_book/2010/01/autistic-individuals-show-strengths-in-embedded-figures-task.html
I ran a search for websites on embedded figures, and this one caught my eye. While it doesn't have a lot of information on what embedded figures are or fun examples and pictures to look at, I like the research being done. This is a study looking at who may be better at perceiving these embedded figures, men or women. an interesting finding was that those individuals who have autism or ausbergers tend to be very fast at finding these figures in pictures. the research points to a possible genetic factor and may have some neat implications on finding out more about the genes that play a part in the development of these disorders. What I found interesting is that the research takes a very specific group of people who interact with their surrounding world at a different level than the average person and find that they actually perceive their worlds differently in how they visually process it. I guess to me what this reinforces is that although we all take visual infomation in through the rods, cones, and that handy optical nerve, it's really the brain doing so much of the "seeing" for us, and different brains will see differently. really neat stuff!
4- what other sort of gene interactions could change our visual process?
in the website i found it stated they found that males were faster at detecting the embedded figures than females... is this why men were considered the hunters in the tribes, because they could detect their prey easier?
when we look at different forms of architecture do our brains have a preference for shape, lines, curvature or other such characteristics that would show a preference for one type or another? do we prefer more natural shapes, more of an organic form than overly structured lines and more deviation from the structures natural surroundings?
1. My text does not mention camouflage, but we use the Gestalt approach to perceive objects. The Gestalt theory emphasizes that the whole is different than the sum of its parts. How things are perceptually organized plays a huge role in how we perceive them. The Gestalt theory has 6 principles on how we see things; the law of closure, the law of similarity, the law of proximity, the law of symmetry, the law of continuity, and the law of common fate. The rules that I think most apply to camouflage are similarity and proximity. The law of similarity states that the mind tends to group similar elements together, whether it be by shape, color, brightness, pattern, etc. The law of proximity basically says that we also tend to group objects that are close together as belonging together. Combined, these laws help explain camouflage. When something is camouflaged, it is unable to be easily distinguished by others, whether it be a animal from a predator, a soldier from its enemy, or a hunter from its prey.
2. I followed the link on the Gestalt theory and camouflage and I got to a essay called ‘On Max Wertheimer and Pablo Picasso: Gestalt Theory, Cubism and Camouflage. This essay examined the similarities between Wertheimer, Picasso, and a painter named Abbot Thayer. Although they may not seem like they have all that much in common, the author points out how all three were related to camouflage at it’s start, although they did not know each other. Wertheimer was researching the Gestalt principles, which I have mentioned before. At the same time, Picasso was starting the paint in cubism, after seeing a painted cannon ball similar to what we now consider camouflage. He even once made a joke that the army should dress their soldiers in harlequin suits, because it would make them confusing to see. Thayer was a painter who noticed countershading in some animals so that the part that has the most shade on it was the lightest and the part with the most sunlight was the darkest, making predators see it as flat. Thayer published articles on this observation and later the articles were used by armies to develop their own camouflage uniforms.
All three of these people, whether they knew it or not, where using the Gestalt principles do explain how camouflage worked by confusing their predator.
3. http://camo.henrikc.dk/
This website doesn’t give as much information as I was hoping about why each country has the type of camouflage that they do, but it did have a lot of pictures. I thought it was really interesting to see some of them, and although the majority were pretty similar, there were a few, such as Korea’s military training pattern and Malaysia’s Khismat Negara pattern that really made me question why they would pick that particular pattern to conceal themselves, when in a group of pictures of camouflage it sticks out. Also, although most of the patterns were very similar to each other, they had little differences. This shows that what we perceive is constructed by us, and what one person (or one army) believes is the best choice for using to camouflage themselves, another person or army may think that another one is a better choice.
4. Why did the military switch from one type of camouflage (the more rounded type) to another (digital)? Is one shown to be more effective at camouflaging?
Thayer believed that all animals coloring was for the purpose of camouflaging themselves, and when an animal can easily be seen then it is just not in its natural environment. Did he also think that this was true for humans? If so, what would be considered our ‘natural environment’?
Is there any empirical research on the effectiveness of different countries camouflage patterns?
1)I did not exactly find information directly related to camouflage in my textbook, but I did find information on the Gestalt theory and figure-ground segregation. It discusses how you can distinguish an object most of the time because the figure stands out from the ground by following different properties. The four main properties are: the figure is more "thinglike" and memorable than the ground, the figure is perceived as being in front of the ground, the ground is perceived as being material formed and extended begind the figure, and the line separating the ground and the figure seems to belong to the figure. I think this relates to the camouflage topic because in order to make something camoflage, you have to kind of ignore these principles to make everything blend. For example, the purpose of camouflage uniforms is so that soldiers will blend into their environment and won't be the figure that sticks out on top of the ground (environment).
2)I visited the page on the gestalt theory. It discussed topics on camouflage including information on animals that use this to blend into the environment, soldiers' uniforms, artwork by artists, and so forth. The information relates to sensation and perception because it discusses how we can change our perception of something by altering it slightly. camouflage, for example, tricks our eyes and makes them work harder to detect things that do use camoflage. Animals that have countershading blend into the environment more and are not as noticeable as three- dimensionsl figures, this leads to predators having to work harder to find them, because the prey does not stick ouot as a figure infront of the ground as much.
3) The other website that I found dealing with camouflage was http://rainforests.mongabay.com/0306.htm. This website discusses different rainforest animals that use camouflaging on their body in order to blend in with their surroundings and avoid predators. The website gives a lot of different examples with pictures and says how exactly the animals use their characteristics of their body to their advantage. This relates to sensation and perception because it's dealing with camouflage and how this method plays tricks on our eyes, which causes us to perceive things differently than we normally would if they were not using camouflage techniques.
4)Do predators learn what to look for in the animals that do use the camouflage/mimicry method?
What's going on in our visual system that deceives us and leads us to believe that the figure and ground are one?
Why haven't humans needed to adapt and use camouflage techniques like animals do, besides clothing that is?
1) The text talks about an idea known as "Crypsis" or the ability to avoid observation or detection by an enemy. It describes cryptic camouflage to be the most common type. That is when an organism tries to blend in with its surroundings.
It also goes on to talk about Gestalt Theory. It relates a lot to camouflage because our mind perceives things closer together and things that look alike as one. Thus, it may be beneficial in the survival of an animal to look like its background.
2) I visited the Dazzle part of the site having to do with camouflage on ships. It would be wild to look at the ships coming at you in real life. It is hard to determine the actual size of the ship itself, you could not tell if there were a hundred men on board or a thousand. This was good in masking flagships in previous wars that have been fought. The ships do look a little ridiculous though, not a very intimidating sight.
3) Firstly, I found a interesting, high def, video of ghillie suits in use in different environments. The quality of camouflage these suits give is incredible. It's nearly impossible to spot anyone in the entire video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCbrCocprE0&feature=related
Secondly, I went to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_camouflage to check out some of the history of camouflage. Originally, camouflage served no purpose to armies. They tended to wear grand, flashy uniforms. (British red coats come to mind) These were used to daunt the enemy, increase squad cohesion, identify fellow members in the fog of war, and also as a deterrent to desertion as you would be easily spotted. It gives a plethora of examples ranging from the German "Splinter" pattern used for tents and uniforms in WWI and all the way up to modern day "Chocolate Chip" desert camouflage which many of our troops don right now. It also talks about the Dazzle camouflage for ships. It relates to the website and talks about how it is used for confusion, rather than camouflage. It is too hard for spotters to tell what size, shape, and type the ship is. Not only that, it's hard to discern whether it's coming toward or away from you.
Questions-
Would people with color deficiencies spot camouflaged items easier?
How long does it take for some animals, such as iguanas, to absorb color from their surroundings?
Is there modern technology that can absorb light from any surface and essentially camouflage a human?
1) My book talked a lot about perceiving a camouflaged bird. Saying that birds are very good about hiding themselves among trees and holding themselves just right so that predators are not able to see them. My book also goes on to talk about the importance of movement and what we can perceive out of some simple motions. Saying that we are able to see the difference from the ground and the object moving and how large or far away the object is just by its simple movements. It also talks about Gestalt theory of perception, saying that he formed some of the basic ideas of how we interact and see different movements.
2) The part the site that I found the most interesting was the camouflage blog, which dealt a lot with William Andrew Mackay. It gave us a lot of background information on him but it also talked about the important things that he did to help camouflage flourish. He ended up starting a school that deals with the importance of camouflage and also tried to apply camouflage to different boats that would throw off submarines if they had their periscope up and were trying to see a boat above them. Later on in the blog it talks about the importance of war camouflage and the different types of work that people tried to help contribute to this very idea. The book that they were talking about was a scrapbook of famous artists who tried to contribute to war camouflage. The way this relates sensation and perception based off of how we don't see things that are not there. Our eyes will lie to us and tell us nothing is there when in fact someone or something could be hiding using camouflage to protect themselves from something they see as a threat. What our eye tells us is very important to predicting how far something is away, what it is, how big it is, and many more different ideas. Camouflage plays a major role in what we do and don't see and it is smart to study this because it is something that will always be present.
3) http://camouflage.fi/
The site that I found showed different pictures of camouflage and what it can be used for. It talks about where camouflage started saying that it was originally designed to cover construction site fences and scaffoldings to help make the surrounding buildings look better. They also say that camouflage was designed on the idea of developing a simple solution with maximum visual impact. This site was primarily made for hiding the ugly outside of buildings that are being renovated but it shows how broad camouflage really can be used today. When I think of camouflage I think of military fatigues and outfits but I would have never thought of using it to try and hide buildings that are being renovated. It just shows how important one simple concept of deceiving the eye really can be to todays society and also how in some concepts its all about not seeing the ugly building while other people use it so that they are not seen at all. Its very important to sensation and perception and it just shows how something that we take for granted every day can be something of the utmost importance.
4) How long has the military been using camouflage to try and give others the perceptions that they are not there? When did humans realize that birds were using camouflage to not be seen in trees? Is their a difference between using dots on top of dots with different colors compared to using big blotches with different colors?
1. Pertaining to the subject of camouflage, the book (Wolfe) is very brief. It does not address directly what is actually occurring when an animal uses camouflage, however, the authors expect the reader to apply principles from the chapter to understand how camouflage works. Camouflage is actually a defense mechanism that uses Gestalt grouping rules to "hide" fish from larger predators. The first of these rules is the idea of good continuation, where lines of similar orientation tend to be seen as part of the same contour. Another Gestalt grouping rule is occlusion, where an object appears to be in front of another object. Often times, our visual intelligence will construct lines where it believes an object may be occluding another shape. Occlusion is responsible for the perception of illusory contours and illusory disks that arise in Kanizsa's figures. Related to Gestalt grouping rules, texture segmentation involves separating coarser textures from finer textures within an image. Similarity means that chunks of such an image that are similar to each other (in terms of color, size, orientation, or form) will be grouped together. Proximity is a rule that holds that the tendency of two features to group together will increase as the distance between them decreases. Parallelism is a rule for distinguishing figure-ground objects and states that parallel contours are likely to belong to the same figure. Symmetry states that symmetrical regions are more likely to be seen as figure. Common region (often used in camouflage in animals) states that two features will be grouped together if they appear to be a part of the same larger region.
2. On the website I was most interested by the "Dazzle ships." These were ships in world war I that had been painted with extravagant colors and shapes in hopes that it might help counter torpedo attacks by German submarines. This idea was developed by Norman Wilkinson. These bewildering colors and shapes together formed what is known as coincident disruption and is found in the natural world among animals using camouflage. This idea uses many Gestalt grouping rules mentioned in the book (such as rule of common region and the rule of similarity) to confuse enemy ships and make it harder to calculate the speed of the camouflaged ship.
3. I am interested in how certain animals use camouflage in their environment to avoid predators and am more more amazing by the efficiency of these tactics to avoid being eaten. In the website http://www.islamicity.com/science/QuranAndScience/creation/GeneratedFilesnoframe/Cuttlefish.htm a form of camouflage used by an animal called the cuttlefish is discussed. Under the skin of the cuttlefish is a dense layer of elastic pigment sacs called chromatophores. They are mainly yellow, red, black and brown. At any signal, the cells can expand and flood the skin with the appropriate shade. That is how the cuttlefish takes on the color of whatever happens to be surrounding it, and makes the perfect pigment to blend in. They can even make very intricate zebra-stripe like patterns. This is very useful in the rule of common region, where the animal will be grouped into the image of a rock by a predator, and avoid being eaten.
4. Who were the first humans to use camouflage?
Does camouflage work as well on color blind people/animals?
Does camouflage really work for hunters, or is it a superstitious behavior? (I hear that deer are unaffected by camouflage).
Web Exploration Task week #7
1.The text had a closely related topic to camouflage looking at the Gestalt principles of perception. Camouflage can be thought of as a way of confusing the relationship between figure and ground, a way of creating visual noise. The Gestalt psychologists were especially interested in figure-ground relationships and in the things that help a person see objects or patterns as “good figure.” They suggested a number of principles including proximity, similarity, continuation, and closure. It goes into some of the rules mentioned in the reader about proximity, and similarity. It says that the proximity is a rule stating that the tendency of two features grouping together will in fact increase as the distance between them decrease. It is helpful to think of the space between the dots as intervals; in this way one can see their importance as they relate to the interval of time in music. Similarity is defined as the tendency for two features to group together will increase as the similarity increases. I think this ties in directly with camouflage because the two groups are actually increasing in similarity which allows camouflage to occur. The Gestalt principles of organization describe the way we tend to segregate and group visual elements into units or patterns. The overall rationale as to why we do this is explained in part by the law of pragnanz , which states that “Psychological organization will always be as good as the prevailing conditions allow.”
2. I chose to look at the Gestalt theory and see how it relates back to what my text said about the principles and concepts. It was basically an essay about the gestalt psychological theories also the essay talked about cubism and camouflage as well. Wertheimer and Picasso were innovators in the development of military camouflage. Its was hardly an invention but had a massive effect during World War 1. This essay also talked about the word camouflage coming from the French and how it was organized by some artists who were cemoufleurs. There was a person named Thayer who formed the phrase countershading in art as it deals with camouflage. This is a variant of natural camouflage in which the upper surfaces of an animal’s body are perceived darker and the undersides lighter. When a countershaded animal is observed in the wild, its white undersides counteract with the overhead sun. The more sunlight the skin is exposed to the darker it gets vice versa. It is assumed that animals do this for protection to construct low visibility among predators and the do this by counteracting their shades. I also looked at the dazzled paint strip. This type of camouflage was unique because it would use blending and background matching to disguise the original thought. Norman Wilkinson was a Lt in the navy and was the first person to coin dazzle paintings. I loved how this particular part of the site showed a lot of examples that displayed dazzle paintings. Sometimes I think pictures speak louder than a bunch of words because you are able to use your own construction. I particularly like the ones that show ship camouflage in black and white and the color version. There were six steps described in this portion that talked about the designation of ship camouflage.
3.http://chalk.richmond.edu/education/projects/webunits/adaptations/camou1.html
This site was more of a fun site that showed different types of camouflage in a cartoony way. It had some Where’s Waldo stuff and some different pictures in which you had to try and find the animal that is camouflaged. I thought trying to find the animals were very difficult because they are hidden so well within the camouflage. There were also some games that you could play with various camouflages. I found this to be quite interesting experience. There was an exercise called seeing through the camouflage in which you had to look at the different photos and determine what type of camouflage the picture was exhibiting. This site relates to sensation and perception because it is actually putting the different mechanisms we learned together and actually identifying where the root lies within a subject. You have to know what disguise, mimicry, concealing collaboration, and disruptive collaboration are to do the different activities and games this site has to offer.
4. How do some reptiles know when to use different camouflages like to they have a sense of danger in which they use a certian one?
What causes the human eye not to sense different camouflages?
Is using camouflage an effective technique when you are out hunting?
Looking at the camouflages website, I choose Rudolf Arnheim who was a Gestalt psychologist who studied under Max Wertheimer & Wolfgang Kohler. "The Gestalt school theory focuses on "shape, configuration, or structure which as an object of perception forms a specific whole or unity incapable of expression simply in terms of its parts on psychology such as psychological, physiological, and behavioral phenomena." defined in the oxford dictionary. The Arnheim work consist of film and art in how things are perceived by using art as a visual perception. Arnheim wrote a verity of articles, and books Visual thinking, Art & Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye, and "Film as Art" which my touch of the subject which cinematographer my capture by filming the true essence of the actors, or nature in six different basic shots in filming which are extreme long shot, long shot, full shot, medium shot, close up, and extreme shot which I have studied in intro to film as well as the concept of color such as black and white, to use dark shadows to make a person look mysterious in nature, the use of vibrant colors to help tell a story.
The use of camouflages is something that nature use to protect animals so they can be seen by a predator such as the flounder on the ocean floor, butterflies, moth, chameleon, praying mantis, grass hoppers, and last but not least the military with the use of uniforms depending were there mission with be (in the desert, all black for night, white to blend into the snow, of green for the forest or tropics.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/quicktime/l_011_03.html
If evolution has been part of adaptation in the changes of how animals adapt to the surroundings such as the praying mantis in this video. how come only a selected portion of animals have and others have not could it be based on evolution and Darwin theory? He starts that man evolved from primates.
According to http://anthro.palomar.edu/primate/prim_8.htm
"In Recent research has suggested that our intelligence advantage may be due to evolutionary changes in the HAR1F regulator gene beginning about 6 million years ago in our pre-human ancestors but not in those of chimpanzees or other apes. This gene is involved in the production of brain tissue between the 7th and 19th week after conception. It is not surprising that there are some striking differences between the great apes and humans in mental abilities. People have much more complex forms of verbal communication than any other primate species. We are the only animal to create and use symbols as a means of communication. We also have more varied and complex social organizations. The most distinctive feature of humans is our mental ability to create new ideas and complex technologies. This has proven invaluable in the competition for survival. However, the great apes are remarkably intelligent, having mental levels equivalent to a 3-4 year old human child. This is sufficient to allow them to learn and use the sign language of deaf humans in at least a rudimentary way, but they do not have the capability of producing human speech and language. This is likely due to the fact that they have a different form of another key regulator gene known as FOXP2."
Does evolution have something to do with animals adapting to the environment for protection?
If science can prove that humans and primates our similar in DNA, can primates hold the key in changing human diseases, can that be part in which most biomedical testing is use on primates to better understand the effect that might happen to humans?
If we were color blind would we be able to tell the difference in camouflage if it did not exist to the naked eye, and how would we be able to tell if we were in danger if we couldn't tell?
1) My textbook didn't directly discuss camouflage however; I did find information relating to gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology is concerned with the process of perceptiual organization. Grouped in with talking about gestalt psychology is the concept of perceptual organization which is the grouping of small parts into larger units. The question that comes about in discussing perceptual organization is "How do we tell the difference between objects and their backgrounds?" I think this concept can be related to camouflage because because we organize what we see when we focus on something that is camoflaged.
2) The part of the website I decided to follow was Dazzle camouflage (ship camouflage) because its something sounded interesting and I didn't know anything about this topic and wanted to learn more about it. This site talks about the six steps in designing ship camouflage which include: devising a distortion plan, building and paint a model, assessing its effectiveness, making a construction plan, painting the actual vessel, and observing the ship at see. Then it talks about Everett Warren who was a ship camouflage artist and the chronology of his life (he was born in Vinton, Iowa!) and goes into detaila bout how he became interested in camoflage art. Lastly, this site goes into detail and demonstrates the different types of camouflage art. These different types of ship camouflage include: countershading, disruption, coincidence disruption, background picturing, and embedded figures. Countershading is an aspect of animal coloring brought to its attention by an artist named Abbott Handerson Thayer. Countershading was pegged as "Thayer's Law". Disruption is known as high difference camouflage (also known as "dazzle"). Coincidence Disruption refers to camouflage in which blending and disruption occur concurrently. In other words, the figure is not only broken apart, but some of its fragmented portions blend in with the background. Background picturing is when the pattern of disruption of an animal is similar to patterns found in its typical natural surrounding. Embedded figures is Thayers idea of a concept that is easy for individuals to designe their own camouflage. A quote by Thayer that gives us a better idea of what embedded structures is "a person only has to cut out a stencil of the soldier, ship, cannon, or whatever figure he wishes to conceal, and look through this stencil from the viewpoint under consideration, to learn just what costume from that viewpoint would most tend to conceal this figure."
http://www.bobolinkbooks.com/Index/Home.html
3) In this website it talkks about certain aspects of camouflage. This website stated that Cott (1940) wrote the seminal paper on animal camouflage and identified several combinable methods, among them cryptic, disruptive, mimicry and countershading. Ender (1986) defined five characteristic stages of predation: detection, identification, approach, subjugation, and consumption. Adaptations against detection and identification; approach; and subjugation and consumption have been named primary, secondary and tertiary defences, respectively. Cryptic patterning avoids detection whereas disruptive systems are often conspicuous but hamper identification. Confusing, shocking or deimatic signals, such as butterflies flashing large eye-like patterns on their wings, are appropriate during the predator’s approach phase, although are not strictly modes of camouflage. There is evidence that an animal’s perception of its own conspicuousness influences the decision to remain camouflaged or flee when a predator enters the approach phase1. Many camouflage methods are, of course, also applicable to predators aiming to avoid detection by their prey.
The efficacy of a camouflage scheme depends as much on the optical properties of the environment as the visual system of the observer. There exists a co-evolutionary arms race between a prey’s camouflage and neurophysiology of the predator’s visual pathway. If the predator adapts and the match becomes imperfect then the camouflage can be broken, and the prey is under a renewed selective pressure to evade detection. To give a human example, it was noted during World War Two that partially red-green colourblind observers were superior at spotting camouflaged positions. If the tank, for example, slightly contrasts with a forest background in the blue-yellow channel, but matches well in luminance and the red-green channel then it is invisible to a normal observer. Deuteranopiacs, however, are largely insensitive to red-green information so rely proportionally more on the other channels, and can spot the anomaly. This relates to perception because the description of how an animal detects camouflaged objects can be related back to how humans detect camouflaged objects.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucbplrd/motion/motion_middle.html
4) How do our eyes adjust to an object that is camouflage? How does our perception allow for the separation of objects that are within camouflage? What is the process that goes into our visual system adjusting to camouflage?
1.) A closely related topic that my textbook discusses is Gestalt Psychology. Gestalt psychology is founded by basic priniciples of organizing what we we see. To sum up the definition it means to make an object whole instead of seeing its different parts. The book says it like, "the whole is different than the sum of its parts". This principle was illustrated by apparent movement and illusory contours. This related great to the example of the gun blending in with the tree. We couldn't see the gun because we saw the object as a whole. The emphasis on objects as "wholes" led gestalt psychologists to focus on determining principles to explain perceptual organization, which is how small elements become grouped into larger objects.
2.) I was very interested in "dazzle camouflage" so I started to research that first. The site stated that dazzle camouflage, also known as razzle dazzle or dazzle painting, was a camouflage paint scheme used on ships especially during World War 1 and and World War 11. Invented by Norman Wilkinson, it consisted of a complex pattern of geometric shapes in contrasting colors, interruping and intersecting each other. Dazzle didn't seem like camouflage because it drew attention to the ship, rather than hiding it, but it was helpful to distinguish ships in all kinds of weather. Also, it was difficult for enemy attackers to to estimate the type of the ship, its size, speed, and heading. The main purpose of dazzle camouflage on these ships were to confuse enemies, rather than to hide from them.
http://gotouring.com/razzledazzle/articles/dazzle.html
3.) Next I wanted to find a website that talks about how animal camouflage works. This website stated that most animal species in the world have developed some sort of natural camouflage that helps them find food and avoid the attack of predators. An animals environment is the most important factor in what the camouflage looks like. The simplest camouflage technique for an animal is to to match the background of its surroundings. The natural environment serves as a model for te camouflage. Blending in and producing different colors is one of the most common ways for an animal to camouflage itself.
http://animals.howstuffworks.com/animal-facts/animal-camouflage1.htm
4.)Why do our eyes adjust to only seeing one object and not two?? What is the process that our eyes go through to see only one object? How would camouflage work with color blind people and animals???
1)The only aspect of camouflage I found was in Chapter five (Perceiving Objects) when it talked about the rules we learned in Visual Intelligence.
2) The aspect of the website that I choose was Dazzle Camouflage. The site have a picture of a warship painted black and white in order to match the horizon. It says that dazzle camouflage what a single thing appears to be a hodgepodge of unrelated components. The reason they painted ships was so that German U-boats would have trouble calculating where to fire the torpedo. The Dazzle would throw off the calculations. It then talked about how camouflage was designed and used during WWI. It also showed more pictures of the model ships they built and painted.
3) The site I found was HowStuffWorks.com and it explained of how camouflage works for animals. It showed a picture of a toad that blended in with the background and there was also a video on the page. The video was about Cuttlefish camouflage; it says the fish changes the skin and color in order to match the background. The experimenter did experiments with different color rocks at the bottom of a tank. The tank was half white and half red and when the fish moved across it changed color. The amazing thing is that the fish is color blind and can’t see red, only white, black and shades of gray. This site relates to S & P because it demonstrates how camouflage is used in the animal world. The colors and shapes on the Cuttlefish blended in perfectly with the natural riverbed.
4) Would reflections in a mirror be considered camouflage? Dose camouflage made for the military depend on areas where battles happen? How off dose camouflage have to be in order for us to see the difference.
Camouflage generally deals with hiding or masking an object so that it blends into the background. Our text doesn’t exactly discuss this topic but we’ve learned a lot that closely relates to the idea. Camouflage deals with object recognition. VI discusses at length the rules we use to construct an image based on how we distinguish figure from ground. With camouflage figure and ground are blended so many of these rules are not useful to us.
Given what we know about how we perceive and recognize objects good camouflage ought to exploit and bend the rules. The Gestalt visual psychologists showed that we tend to view things as simply as possible (this makes camouflage possible, since if figure looks ‘close enough’ like the ground they’ll blend). We also tend to view things that are similar, in terms of location and orientation for example, as being part of the same thing. Regarding the lines and parts of the camouflage then, they ought to be as similar as possible to whatever background is present, and not conform in any way to the parts of the actual object on which camouflage is being placed. If the camouflage fit with the background, but also rigidly conformed to the ‘part boundaries’ of the actual object it would not be as effective as if it disregarded the parts of the figure or object. Without part boundaries no parts will be constructed and the object will be effectively camouflaged.
Regarding color we know that we associate particular colors with various images. The example in the text shows that when shown that observers will recognize a yellow banana faster than a purple or orange banana, for example. This has a dual effect in camouflage. If a person were wearing standard forest camo, they would be s more difficult to perceive as a person (since people do not usually wear those colors) and simultaneously more quickly recognized as the forest scenery against which they stand. This explains also why ‘orange camo’ has become so popular. Deer see in shades of gray so the orange camo still makes them blend in for the deer, but not for other humans who see in color.
2) I read through the “Camoupedia” and “How Form Functions” links. I’ve never learned anything about camouflage before so most of the information regarding the various types of camouflage were entirely new to me. His pictures of ‘dazzle’ or ‘hodgepodge’ camouflage, namely, the WW1 battleships, were the most interesting picture on the site I thought. To me it would seem that the coloring and jagged lines would draw attention to the ship, make it stand out against the background, whereas generally you’d want to blend in with the background. But his description explains how the geometric lines and black and white coloring made it almost impossible to judge the appropriate speed and distance the ship was traveling at so it was much more difficult to fire a torpedo at it. This shows that camouflage is not always about simply blending figure and ground (and thus making the object invisiable), but about confusing other aspects of the visual scene (viz. speed, distance, etc.).
His explanation of aesthetic and anaesthetic experiences was really interesting I though, and definitely a different way of talking about aesthetics than is discussed in various philosophy groups. Putting the aesthetic experience in the middle of two poles of anesthetic experience really helps to create a picture in your mind. It relates to what we have been learning in the text and VI, in that we experience a mix of both various objects and common backgrounds and similarities. We have developed to experience just the right mix of simplicity and complexity.
3) After reading another post on digital camo I got interested in what mathematics, fractals, and other scientific jargon was behind this change. I came across the following site which explains why digital camo works.
http://www.hyperstealth.com/digital-design/index.htm
One important fact, not mentioned till the very end of the article is that ‘digital’ camo is a misnomer used because of the resemblance of the camouflage to pixilated images on computer screens. Lt. Col. O’Neil explains that the design is really designed to mimic the ‘texture or typical backgrounds using a mathematical formula’ and that squares are used because these are the easiest to produce on computer screens, though any shape including the original ‘blob-like’ shapes could be used.
The following website explains the basics behind fractal geometry, which explained to me why it is not being used for camouflage.
http://compression.ru/arctest/descript/fractal.htm
The basic idea is that traditional geometry uses straight lines which are not routinely found in nature. Fractal geometry deals with curved lines which are found in nature. A fractal is a shape that can be broken up into parts which more or less resemble the original shape. So input mathematical equations using fractal geometry, and yadda, yadda, yadda, you get more realistic patterns that include changes in depth and other cool things.
4) What types of people are better at seeing ‘past’ camouflage? Technology is constantly being developed to make better camouflage, but are their advancements being created to detect camouflage ? So anaesthetic experiences are either monotonous or chaotic, and aesthetics lies in between, is there any better way to narrow the understanding of aesthetics or are these the only possible boundaries and the rest is ‘up to the viewer’? This doesn’t seem likely so is it rules similar to those outlined in VI that explain this or others?