This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Karen Hopkins.

Nature may be red in tooth and claw, but one plucky caterpillar dresses in orange and black to avoid becoming somebody's lunch.

What's really surprising though is that this distinctive set of stripes can serve as both a

warning or as camouflage depending on how far away it is from the viewer.

Animals can deploy color as a defense mechanism in a couple of ways.

Some shades and patterns help potential prey blend into the background.

Whereas bold markings often serve as a signal that an animal is unpalatable,

for example, chock full of toxins.

So these two strategies have often been considered in isolation and often seen as mutual exclusive

and alternative mechanisms.

But under natural conditions you find this distinction is less clear-cut.

Jim Barnard of the University of Bristol, who led the study to explore

whether the same coloration might do double duty, allowing an animal

to be obvious under some conditions, but unseen in others.

They focus their attention on the caterpillars of cinebar moths.

These larvae sport bright orange and black stripes.

Their vivid appearance was believed to remind the birds who may have eaten others of their

kind that they are none too tasty, thanks to their diet of alkaloid-rich ragwort plants.

The researchers snapped photos of the caterpillars in suburban green spaces around Bristol,

and they used a visual modeling program to give them a bird's eye view of what the Caterpillars look like, either close up or from farther away.

What we found is that although at close range the Caterpillar stripes are highly conspicuous. These bright colours

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