The giant panda is cryptic
Nokelainen, O., Scott-Samuel, N. E., Nie, Y., Wei, F., & Caro, T. (2021). The giant panda is cryptic. Scientific Reports, 11, Article 21287. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00742-4
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Scientific ReportsDate
2021Discipline
Ekologia ja evoluutiobiologiaEvoluutiotutkimus (huippuyksikkö)Ecology and Evolutionary BiologyCentre of Excellence in Evolutionary ResearchCopyright
© The Author(s) 2021
The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is an iconic mammal, but the function of its black-and-white coloration is mysterious. Using photographs of giant pandas taken in the wild and state-of-the-art image analysis, we confirm the counterintuitive hypothesis that their coloration provides camouflage in their natural environment. The black fur blends into dark shades and tree trunks, whereas white fur matches foliage and snow when present, and intermediate pelage tones match rocks and ground. At longer viewing distances giant pandas show high edge disruption that breaks up their outline, and up close they rely more on background matching. The results are consistent across acuity-corrected canine, feline, and human vision models. We also show quantitatively that the species animal-to-background colour matching falls within the range of other species that are widely recognised as cryptic. Thus, their coloration is an adaptation to provide background matching in the visual environment in which they live and simultaneously to afford distance-dependent disruptive coloration, the latter of which constitutes the first computational evidence of this form of protective coloration in mammals.
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Publisher
Nature Publishing GroupISSN Search the Publication Forum
2045-2322Publication in research information system
https://converis.jyu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/101683967
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Additional information about funding
This research was funded by the Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Research Fellow grant (#21000038821) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB31000000).License
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