March 21-24

Masters of Disguise: Camouflage & Natural Selection 🦎🌿

📅 Activity Completed: March 21–22

In this hands-on lesson, students explored how camouflage serves as an adaptation that increases an organism’s chance of survival. Through notes, examples, and a creative simulation, students saw how traits like coloration and mimicry are passed on through natural selection.

📝 What We Covered:

Camouflage as an Adaptation

• Camouflage helps animals blend into their surroundings to hide from predators or sneak up on prey.

• It is a trait that can be passed down if it helps an organism survive, reproduce, and pass on its genes.

Types of Camouflage Explored:

✅ Concealing Coloration – Blending in with the background (e.g., arctic fox in the snow).
✅ Disruptive Coloration – Patterns like stripes or spots that break up the outline of the body (e.g., zebras).
✅ Mimicry – When one organism imitates another (e.g., Viceroy butterfly mimicking Monarch butterfly).

Natural Selection Example: Peppered Moth

• Before the Industrial Revolution, light-colored moths blended into clean trees and were less likely to be eaten.

• After pollution darkened the trees, dark-colored moths were better camouflaged and became more common.

• This demonstrated how environmental changes influence which traits are "naturally selected".

🎨 Camouflaged Chameleons Activity

Day 1:

• Students designed their own chameleons using camouflage strategies to blend into the classroom.

• Chameleons were hidden around the room using patterns, colors, and placement to make them as invisible as possible.

Day 2:

• Mrs. Everhart and Mrs. Heather acted as predatory birds and searched the classroom for camouflaged chameleons.

• Afterwards, students reflected on which camouflage strategies worked best and why.

🌍 Why This Matters:

This activity helped students understand how adaptations like camouflage can influence survival, and how natural selection drives evolution. Animals with better camouflage are more likely to survive, reproduce, and pass on their traits, shaping populations over time.

✅ Great job being both predators and survivors! Keep thinking about how the environment selects for traits in all living things. 🔍🧬