Active camouflage or adaptive camouflage is camouflage that adapts, often rapidly, to the surroundings of an object such as an animal or military vehicle. In theory, active camouflage could provide perfect concealment from visual detection.
Active camouflage is used in several groups of animals, including reptiles on land, and cephalopod molluscs and flatfish in the sea. Animals achieve active camouflage both by color change and (among marine animals) by counterillumination.
In military usage, active camouflage remains at the research stage. Counterillumination camouflage was first investigated during the Second World War for marine use. Current research aims to achieve crypsis by using cameras to sense the visible background, and by controlling panels or coatings that can vary their appearance.
Read more about Active Camouflage: Definition, In Research, In Animals
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“This teaching is not practical in the sense in which the New Testament is. It is not always sound sense in practice. The Brahman never proposes courageously to assault evil, but patiently to starve it out. His active faculties are paralyzed by the idea of caste, of impassable limits of destiny and the tyranny of time.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)