Firstly, camouflage which works well against one background may not be effective against another – in other words, there will be strong constraints on both an item's location (as well as the viewpoint of any predator) if it is to remain hidden. But there are two major problems with this strategy. This is, indeed, commonly found among both evolved and man-made attempts at concealment, and is generally achieved by so-called background matching: where the colours and patterns of the target sample those in the environment –. The term camouflage most often conjures up ideas of invisibility: an attempt to prevent detection of a target. In the latter case, we demonstrate that in a typical situation involving an RPG7 attack on a Land Rover the reduction in perceived speed is sufficient to make the grenade miss where it was aimed by about a metre, which could be the difference between survival or not for the occupants of the vehicle. The effect should obtain in predators launching ballistic attacks against rapidly moving prey, or modern, low-tech battlefields where handheld weapons are fired from short ranges against moving vehicles. Here we show that dazzle patterns can distort speed perception, and that this effect is greatest at high speeds. Whilst there are good reasons to believe that most of these perceptual distortions may have occurred, there is no evidence for the last claim: changing perceived speed. Similar arguments had been advanced earlier for biological camouflage. Rather than attempting to hide individual units, it was claimed that this patterning would disrupt the perception of their range, heading, size, shape and speed, and hence reduce losses from, in particular, torpedo attacks by submarines. Faced with this problem, navies in both World Wars in the twentieth century painted their warships with high contrast geometric patterns: so-called “dazzle camouflage”. Movement is the enemy of camouflage: most attempts at concealment are disrupted by motion of the target.
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