Study
Countershading enhances cryptic protection: an experiment with wild birds and artificial prey
Rowland, Hannah M.; Speed, Michael P.; Ruxton, Graeme D.; Edmunds, Malcolm; Stevens, Martin; Harvey, Innes F.
Animal Behaviour, 2007
Placed artificial pastry prey in the field carrying either a countershaded gradient — darker above, lighter below — or uniform colouring of the same average shade, and recorded survival against predation by wild birds.
- Studied in
- Aves
- Sample size
- artificial pastry prey in field trials with wild birds
Countershaded targets survived significantly better than uniformly coloured targets of equivalent average brightness, under natural illumination.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Countershading provides a real concealment benefit, consistent with the self-shadow concealment explanation, rather than being merely an incidental gradient.
How NatureHQ reads it
The measured support for an idea that had been asserted since the 1890s and doubted for much of the century since. The control is what matters: same average shade, only the gradient differs, so the effect cannot be simple darkness.
- Artificial prey of a fixed shape under particular lighting; countershading’s benefit is expected to depend on illumination and orientation, which one trial cannot span.
- Demonstrates a benefit under these conditions rather than establishing that this is why any given real animal is countershaded.
Same average shade, different gradient
Does a dark-above, pale-below gradient actually conceal, or is it simply that darker animals are harder to see?
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Countershading
Dark above and pale below does conceal: artificial prey with the gradient outlived uniform prey of the same average shade. But the pattern is so common that concealment need not be why any given animal has it.
Countershading
A fish is not mainly cancelling its own shadow. It is viewed against bright surface from below and dark depths from above — so the same dark-above, pale-below pattern is solving a different problem from a land animal’s.
Published by: Elsevier journalsPublished in an Elsevier journal.
doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.01.030
Checked against Crossref on 2026-09-28, and they agree on the title, the authors and the year.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-09-03.