Plate 3 — Views of specimen no. 1: j, after three days on background figured; k, after fourteen days on white marble bottom (the fish was in reality much paler than the photograph would seem to indicate); l, after three days on the background figured; m, after six days on the background figured.
Featured on PDR in the collection Flatfish Camouflage Experiments (1911)
This great series of photographs comes from a 1911 paper in the Journal of Experimental Zoology by American ichthyologist and zoologist Francis Bertody Sumner. The images were captured a year earlier at the Naples Zoological Station in Italy and back home at the U.S. fisheries Laboratory at Woods Hole, in a series of experiments in which Sumner puts a various types of flounder through their paces as regards camouflage ability. Placing them against bold and striking patterns (more than they'd experience in nature), Sumner photographed them at various states of adapting to their new backgrounds — and concluded that the fish with the most favourable adaptive qualities was a small species of flounder named Rhomboidichthys podas. Although the fact that the photographs are in black…
Also appearing in the collection…
Plate 3 — Views of specimen no. 1: j, after three days on background figured; k, after fourteen days on white marble bottom (the fish was in reality much paler than the photograph would seem to indicate); l, after three days on the background figured; m, after six days on the background figured.
Artist
Date
1911
From
Journal of Experimental Zoology
