Dazzled and Deceived

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Dazzled and Deceived
AuthorPeter Forbes
SubjectCamouflage, mimicry
GenrePopular science
PublisherYale University Press
Publication date
2009
AwardsWarwick Prize for Writing

Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage is a 2009 book on

Hugh Cott
, who advised the British army on camouflage in the Western Desert.

The book was well received by critics, both military historians and biologists, and won the 2011 Warwick Prize for Writing.

Book

Publication

Dazzled and Deceived was published by Yale University Press in 2009 in English and also translated into Korean.[1]

The book contains 34 colour plates and six monochrome maps and drawings.

Contents

Forbes noted that the anti-Darwinian Richard Swan Lull thought the leaf butterfly Kallima inachus's camouflage "too perfect" for natural selection, sparking a long debate.[2]

The book looks at the history of

cobweb.[3] Fritz Müller made a further step, showing that pairs of distasteful butterfly species - or more than two - could with benefit resemble each other
.

Abbot Thayer
tried to show that even the bright pink of these conspicuous birds helped to conceal them at sunset.

Forbes describes how an American artist,

uncontrolled and the paint schemes were varied continuously. Cott wrote "the only compendious zoology tract ever to be packed in a soldier's kitbag",[4] his 1940 Adaptive Coloration in Animals. Forbes tells how the book got Cott the job of camouflage instructor to the British Eighth Army in Egypt, in a unit which created large-scale decoys including a dummy railhead and which successfully concealed a whole armoured division in the open desert in a deception operation for the battle of El Alamein
. Art and nature had come together in the service of warfare.

Forbes rounds off the book by looking at the genetic basis of camouflage in butterflies, which has been studied extensively, from the early work (starting in 1954) of

hybridisation
.

Prizes

The book won the 2011 Warwick Prize for Writing.[5]

Reception

Military history

SS West Mahomet in dazzle camouflage, 1918

The

cubist artists like André Mare on the Western Front. In Newark's view, "Forbes tells brilliantly this exciting and colourful story with good anecdotes, bizarre characters and intriguing evidence.".[6]

Crusader tank in Sunshield camouflage cover
A Crusader tank in open desert, masquerading as a truck in its 'Sunshield' camouflage covers, 1942

Veronica Horwell, in

Hugh Bamford Cott "did become the basis for subsequent military camouflage, starting with successes improvised in the North African desert campaigns with palm fronds and jerry cans."[7] She writes that Forbes was fascinated by nature's improvisations as much as by those of "a rum mix of biologists and artists" in the two World Wars, since he sees "with lovely clarity" that nature is a tinkerer, lacking any grand design but full of chance and "smallscale experiment".[7]

The History of War encyclopedia website commented that their review was of possibly the only book on evolution they would ever publish, for its four useful chapters on the history of military camouflage including First World War dazzle camouflage and, flourishing in the Second World War, everything from inflatable dummy tanks to the deception preparations for El Alamein. They comment that the story of scientific research is fascinating, and that "Forbes does a very good job of explaining some very complicated theories, and has produced a classic work of popular science."[8]

Marek Kohn, in The Independent, writes that the "traffic in ideas, from biology through art to warfare, provides Peter Forbes's Dazzled and Deceived with an intriguing and fluent narrative. It reaches its battlefield climax with the desert battle of El Alamein, where Montgomery's forces orchestrated thousands of dummy and disguised vehicles."[9] Kohn gives as an example of the interchange the introduction by the naturalist Peter Scott of disruptive patterning to the Royal Navy.[9]

Biology

Four female morphs of the African swallowtail Papilio dardanus, each mimicking a different distasteful species of swallowtail

The

Nature, calls Dazzled and Deceived an "excellent and wide-ranging book", praising Forbes for showing both how developments in the theory of evolution, genetics, and developmental biology influenced research on protective coloration, and in turn the influence of research on coloration on evolutionary theory.[10]

The

evolutionary biologist Edmund D. Brodie III, in BioScience, notes that the brilliantly coloured coral snakes, boldly striped in red, yellow, and black, are "among the most beautiful and breathtaking of reptiles",[11] and argues that anyone who has seen one would agree with Hugh Cott that Abbot Thayer's claim that "such a beast is camouflaged borders on the ludicrous."[11] Brodie notes that all the same, he found himself about to grab one during fieldwork in Costa Rica. He observes that the book does not attempt completeness on camouflage or mimicry, nor a linear history of ideas in these fields. Instead, writes Brodie, Forbes describes "some significant moments in the development of the field",[11] both historic and modern. This allows Forbes to look into "the personalities and conflicts that led to our present dogmas, and in doing so reveals some of the biases present in our thinking."[11] He notes that scientific ego combined with government inertia to stymie the use of science in the First World War and that Cott used "the power of data" in the form of photographs of camouflaged guns to convince the British military in the Second World War. Brodie notes that much of the book looks at the genetics and development of mimetic patterns on butterfly wings, starting with E. B. Ford's work on ecological genetics, which ultimately led to an understanding of supergenes, linked gene complexes.[11]

Gail Vines, in New Scientist magazine, quotes Forbes's description of the archetypal camouflaged animal – not the chameleon but the octopus, a "living, breathing, swimming compendium of every camouflage and mimicry technique known."[12] She calls the book authoritative, and the range of natural deceptions it describes "astounding, and the history of research into the phenomenon is just as surprising."[12]

The

Heliconiid butterflies with their complex patterns of mimicry; and the African swallowtail Papilio dardanus with its unique range of morphs controlled by no less than 11 alleles of the engrailed.[13]

References

  1. ^ "ti:Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage au:Peter Forbes". WorldCat. Retrieved 13 May 2018.
  2. ^ Forbes 2009, p. 47.
  3. ^ Forbes 2009, pp. 43–45.
  4. ^ Forbes 2009, p. 153.
  5. ^ "Warwick Prize for Writing 2011". University of Warwick. Retrieved 12 May 2018.
  6. ^
    The Financial Times
    . Retrieved 12 May 2018.
  7. ^ a b c Horwell, Veronica (31 October 2009). "Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage by Peter Forbes". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 May 2018.
  8. ^ "Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage, Peter Forbes". History of War. Retrieved 12 May 2018.
  9. ^ a b Kohn, Marek (30 October 2009). "Dazzled and Deceived: mimicry and camouflage, By Peter Forbes". The Independent. Retrieved 13 May 2018.
  10. doi:10.1038/463161a
    .
  11. ^
    S2CID 198153255
    .
  12. ^
    doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(09)63009-8
    .
  13. ^ a b c Eeles, Peter (4 May 2010). "A Review of: Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage". Dispar | The Online Journal of Lepidoptera. Retrieved 13 May 2018.

Sources

  • Forbes, Peter (2009). Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage. Yale University Press.
    ISBN 978-0-300-17896-8
    .

External links
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