Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage

'A revealing and entertaining review of mimicry and camouflage in nature, art, and war ...' - Natural History

Thousands of creatures worldwide have honed and practised camouflage over hundreds of millions of years.

Imitating other animals or their surroundings, nature's fakers use mimicry to protect themselves, to attract and repel, to bluff and warn, to forage and to hide. The advantages of mimicry are obvious - but how does 'blind' nature do it? And how has humanity learnt to profit from nature's ploys?

Dazzled and Deceived explores the impact of mimicry and camouflage on art, literature, military tactics and medicine across the twentieth century, and sheds new light on the greatest quest, that of understanding the processes of life at its deepest level.

'Forbes... sees with lovely clarity that nature, like art, is a bricoleur, a tinkerer, and that the thrill of it all is not in a stately grand design - as Darwin understood, there never has been any such thing, it's all expendable - but in life's multiple choices, chances and small-scale experiments: so many possibilities'- Guardian

'The natural armoury of deceptions as depicted in Dazzled and Deceived is astounding, and the history of research into the phenomenon is just as surprising. Starting in the 1850s in the Amazon rainforest, Forbes presents an authoritative account of research into mimicry and brings it bang up to date' - New Scientist

Peter Forbes is a writer interested in science and art. A science graduate, he was editor of the Poetry Society's Poetry Review from 1986 to 2002 and has written books on biomimetics and nanoscience. Dazzled and Deceived was awarded the 2011 Warwick Prize for Writing.