Theme: Camouflage
Award: Winner
Photographer: Jessica Bennett
This picture is of a Cuban tree frog which can change a variety of colors including shades of green, black, and brown and white. They have three different kinds of chromatophores, one that cases brown and black, one iridescent, and one yellow. Although some will have different colors like blue and red depending on whether they are poisonous or not and where they live. To change color they move either the pigments or the reflective plates in these chromatophores .The colors are not usually based on the background, but they do it because of the amount of light, how they are feeling, and the temperature. Some will even turn white when they are hot and black when they are cold. I was inspired to take this picture because when I found this frog, he was so well camouflaged, that he was very difficult to see. Not only was he the exact color as the mulch that he was in, but part of him also underneath some pieces of bark.