Disappearing Species
Twenty-One Species Adapted To Disappear In The Snow. Then, The Snow Disappeared. Context is everything when it comes to camouflage. An outfit that would help you blend in when walking through the woods would make you stand out in the middle of a city. Animals have evolved over millennia to use camouflage as a lifesaving way to dodge predators — so what happens to them when, over the course of just a few decades, their environments change? For snowshoe hares and 20 other species across the northern hemisphere, the white winter coats that once rendered them nearly invisible to predators now make them conspicuous to lynx, foxes, weasels and hawks. Biologist Scott Mills of the University of Montana, who began studying snowshoe hares in the 1990s with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), says finding them has become much easier as average winter snow duration has decreased over time. “For many years my fieldwork focused on getting radio