List of camouflage methods

Camouflage is the concealment of animals or objects of military interest by any combination of methods that helps them to remain unnoticed.

Different camouflage methods employed by terrestrial, aerial, and aquatic animals, and in military usage, are compared in the table.

Several methods are often combined, so for example the Bushbuck is both countershaded over its whole body, and disruptively coloured with small pale spots.

Until the discovery of countershading in the 1890s, protective coloration was considered to be mainly a matter of colour matching,[3] but while this is certainly important, a variety of other methods are used to provide effective camouflage.

In 1890 the English zoologist Edward Bagnall Poulton categorised animal colours by their uses,[8] which cover both camouflage and mimicry.