{"id":109624,"date":"2022-04-06T04:50:45","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T10:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=109624"},"modified":"2022-04-06T05:11:34","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T11:11:34","slug":"yellow-bellied-marmot-pup-peeking-out-from-a-rocky-crevice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/04\/06\/yellow-bellied-marmot-pup-peeking-out-from-a-rocky-crevice\/","title":{"rendered":"Yellow-bellied Marmot Pup Peeking Out From A Rocky Crevice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cryptic coloration isn’t just for the birds.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Five days ago in a remote area of northern Utah I was amazed by how well this young marmot pup was hidden, even though it was very well lit in the early morning sun. The pup was pointed out to me so I knew precisely where to look and what I was looking for and it wasn’t very far away but I’ll be damned if I could spot it.<\/p>\n

I stared at that small area of the rocky outcrop for almost a minute before the pup moved its head a little and I finally spotted it. Now it’s true that I don’t have the best eyesight in the world but it isn’t all that bad either.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once again I was impressed by just how well cryptic coloration<\/a><\/span><\/span> actually works. In northern Utah most of our exposed rocks are covered with these orange lichens and the rock piles are ideal habitat for marmots. Marmots are on the menu for every medium-sized to large predator in the area so that’s a recipe for selection pressure and evolution. Just look how closely the color of the lichens on the rocks matches some of the colors of the marmot and the marmot’s darker colors and patterns closely mimic the shaded areas in the rocks.<\/p>\n

In the natural world cryptic coloration is closer to the rule than it is to the exception so it makes me wonder how some carnivores find enough to eat.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cryptic coloration isn’t just for the birds.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,3953],"tags":[1345,1344,127,2944,3248,6287,2580,6288,311,1512],"class_list":["post-109624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ecology-and-environment","category-yellow-bellied-marmots","tag-camouflage","tag-cryptic-coloration","tag-evolution","tag-marmota-flaviventris","tag-natural-selection","tag-orange-lichens","tag-pup","tag-selection-pressure","tag-utah-2","tag-yellow-bellied-marmot"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/yellow-bellied-marmot-7272-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-sw8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109624"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109645,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109624\/revisions\/109645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}