Blending in with the surroundings is an incredibly useful habit. Even without evidence, this fact would be obvious from the sheer variety of organisms that do it and the vast diversity of strategies and adaptations they use. This episode, we look at what camouflage is and how it works in its many forms, and we explore how we can spot camouflage – and what we can learn from it – in the fossil record.

In the news: curled-up trilobites, Antarctic octopus DNA, crab organs, and giant whales.

Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:05:35Main discussion, Part 1: 00:37:25Main discussion, Part 2: 01:29:35Patron question: 02:14:40

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The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome.More music like this at http://ocremix.org.

Musical Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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