Camouflage

Roger Caillois destabilized the benign reading of mimicry, presenting a psychoanalytical examination where the dialogue between self and environment is called into question. Caillois drew attention to the lack of a rational connection between camouflage and survival, and as Dawn Ades explained, both Caillois and fellow camouflage essayist, Jacques Delamain, “challenge any neat division between scientific classification of natural phenomena and poetic metaphors found in nature.”[2] Caillois pointed out that the adaptation hypothesis of camouflage is flawed in numerous ways. For example, insects which are unpalatable anyway are still camouflaged, as are insects which are hunted by smell, which makes any efforts at visual disguise redundant. Some insects are so well-camouflaged that they are pruned by gardeners, or the “even sadder” case of the Phyllia, who “browse among themselves, taking each other for real leaves…”[3] or, cannot find each other when it comes time to mate. The enigma of disguise as display is evident in the Oxyrrhyncha, or spider crabs, who “haphazardly gather and collect on their shells the seaweed and polyps of the milieu in which they live … deck[ing] themselves in whatever is offered to them, including some of the most conspicuous elements…”

via here