Camouflaged Among the Rare Books

Guest post by Library volunteer Rebecca Molton-de Greeff, MLIS

The library's Rare Book collection includes two books that initially seem unrelated, yet they contain the origins of a heated century-old debate between two amateur naturalists, one a well-known bipolar American painter and the other a formidable and popular former President. These books are Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom: An Exposition of the Laws of Disguise Through Color and Pattern written in 1909 by Abbott Thayer and his son, Gerald, and African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist written by Theodore Roosevelt the following year.

Naturalists had begun recognizing that animal color patterns played a large role in survival in the mid-nineteenth century, yet none had proposed an all-encompassing law of animal coloration until Thayer's Concealing-Coloration. A non-scientist, Thayer claims early on in his book that his artistic training is precisely what allows him to properly interpret animal coloration, "[f]or it deals wholly in optical illusion, and this is the very gist of a painter's life" (p.3). He illustrates this view (literally) throughout the book with painted cut-outs and photos of decoys posed in natural settings, as well as photos of captured wild animals. Ironically, the book's cover is unremarkable in its plainness.


Thayer explains concealing-coloration as animals "painted by Nature darkest on those parts which tend to be most lighted by the sky's light, and vice versa" (p.10), with the effects canceling each other out, making the object appear flat and virtually indistinguishable from its background. He stresses that the primary purpose of concealing-coloration is for concealment of predator or prey at the crucial moment that it is about to catch or be caught. As an example, Thayer explains the male peacock's coloring (illustration at right) in this way: its concealing-coloration is a combination of green and blue for foliage and the sky, the crest on its head keeps it from revealing its shape when it moves, and the ocelli, or eye-like spots, on its tail feathers get larger the further away they are located from the body, leading the viewer's eye away.

Although many naturalists viewed Thayer's theory as plausible in regards to a handful of animals, Thayer's belief that his law applied to "almost all animals" (p.3) was widely criticized as too extreme, most intensely and publicly by Roosevelt. Roosevelt devoted his 22-page Appendix E of African Game Trails to refuting Thayer's theory, in which he argues against concealing-coloration for most animals using his own experiences hunting and observing the behaviors of large African animals. He mentions behaviors that wild animals exhibit, such as crouching, that Thayer's decoys and paintings cannot do, and hunting at night, when protective coloration does not matter. Roosevelt also writes that Thayer's idea that certain coloration erases an animal completely only at certain angles and distances, which occurs very rarely, makes it conspicuous most of the time and is therefore not protective.

Thayer and Roosevelt would continue to attack each other in articles and letters for the next few years before eventually coming to an uneasy truce. Roosevelt would move on to exploring parts of South America. Undaunted, Thayer would eventually become known to many as the "father of camouflage" after successfully convincing the American and British armies to adapt concealing-coloration to their uniforms during World War I.


Further Reading (all available in the CMNH Library):

Peck, Robert McCracken. (1988) "Abbott H. Thayer and the Art of the Invisible." International Wildlife, 18(5), September/October, 38-43.  

Roosevelt, Theodore. (1911) "Revealing and Concealing Coloration in Birds and Mammals." Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 30, 119-231. 

Thayer, Abbott H. (1896) "The Law Which Underlies Protective Coloration." The Auk, 13(2), 124-129.

Illustrations (from top): Cover of African Game Trails (Charles Scribners' Sons, 1910); Peacock, Cottontail Rabbit, Male Ruffed Grouse and Copperhead Snake plates from Concealing-Coloration (The MacMillan Co., 1909).