Can you spot the birds' clever camouflage in this eye-fooling photo?
It's like if your skin matched your bedspread exactly, and no one even knew you were grabbing a nap.
- Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year" award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Animals whose natural coloring makes them able to easily camouflage themselves in the wild are among the luckiest of the wild kingdom. They can hide from predators, sneak up on prey, or, as in this photo from Parks Australia, just take a sunny little snooze without being bothered.
These tawny frogmouths (a stocky bird that resembles an owl) are native to Australia, and known for their neat little trick of blending in with tree branches. They've even got a special camouflage posture, thrusting their heads upward to further fool the baddies who might want to bother them. And they even power-nap in pairs, like this dozing duo spotted at Neds Corner Station, a 30,000-hectare (2.47 acre) nature reserve in Victoria.
Thankfully for those of us who never could solve those 1990s Magic Eye mall posters (not to mention Blake Lively's shark version), these birds are fairly easy to find if you're a human staring at a computer screen, not a hungry fox on the prowl. (Look for the closed eyes on both birds, and the curved beak on the top one.)
But if you're feeling pretty sharp-eyed after spotting them, move on to this frog and lizard, also hiding in plain sight. Lucky critters, born with their own version of Harry Potter's invisibility cloak.