Who's looking at you. Chameleons are known for their ability to change their appearance and blend into their surroundings. Research published this week in Biology Letters suggests that their color choices depend in part on what is looking at them. Scientists captured 16 dwarf chameleons and exposed them to realistic stand-ins of two common predators: the fiscal shrike bird and a tree snake called the boomslang. When a bird was in the vicinity, chameleons switched their color to match the surroundings much more closely than when a snake was nearby, the scientists report. But when the team modeled how a snake would see the camouflaged creatures, they discovered that the chameleons were hidden in plain sight better for the snakes than they were for birds.
