Lone Changer: Fish Camouflage Better without Friends Nearby
Published:18 Oct.2021 Source:University of Sydney
It's like a half-hearted dress up party: gobies don't camouflage completely in groups, new research finds. They change colour to avoid detection by predators and do so faster and better when alone.
In the research, published in Royal Society Open Science, University of Sydney academics suggest this is because lone fish are more vulnerable. They add that camouflage has a metabolic cost, so gobies likely preserve this energy when, due to safety in numbers, they don't need it as much.