Hiding in plain sight

Although the principles of disruptive colouration are widely believed to explain a variety of animal colour patterns, there has been no field evidence that it works to reduce the detection rates of natural prey. In a recent paper, Cuthill et al. successfully address this shortfall, separating the benefits of background matching from those of disruptive colouration. Their results provide the first definitive field support for this long-recognized phenomenon and suggest several new avenues of research.