Distractive markings

Distractive markings serve to camouflage animals or military vehicles by drawing the observer's attention away from the object as a whole, such as noticing its outline.

The American artist Abbott Handerson Thayer described distractive markings in his 1909 book on camouflage, Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom.

[2] Thayer wrote that several snow-land animals ... [such as] Arctic hares and foxes, the boreal weasels and ... the ptarmigans, the snow buntings, the snowy owl ... have a few sharp black markings in their mainly immaculate white costumes.

They are, in most cases, too small to show except in a very near view—when, by their sharp but isolated and noncommittal conspicuousness, they tend to draw and hold the eye's attention, in a sense, to dazzle it, so that it less readily discerns the faintly shown snow-white body of their wearer.

[1]For camouflage to succeed, an individual has to pass undetected, unrecognized or untargeted, and hence it is the processing of visual information that needs to be deceived.

In 1909, Abbott Handerson Thayer described the snowy owl 's black markings on its white snow camouflage as distractive. [ 1 ]
Disruptive and distractive camouflage both rely on conspicuous markings, but differ in their mechanisms, and therefore in the most effective size and position of the markings. [ 3 ]