Counter shading might also work by erasing depth perception.

反阴影也可以通过消除深度感知来工作。

Counter shading might make an animal just barely disappear to our very awesome human vision.

反向阴影可能会让视力非常好的人基本看不到动物。

So it could be that counter shading evolved in swimming species for a completely different reason.

所以游泳物种进化出反向阴影可能是出于完全不同的原因。

These days this effect that they are called obliterate shading is known as counter shading.

如今，这种被称为抹去阴影的效果被称为反阴影。

The bottom line is that we don't know exactly how counter shading works for every animal.

重点是我们不知道反阴影是如何在每种动物身上起作用的。

And while some studies have shown that counter shading does protect animals from being spotted it's still not exactly clear how it works.

虽然一些研究表明反阴影确实可以保护动物不被发现，但我们还不清楚它的工作原理。

In brightly lit habitats like grasslands and deserts where shadows are especially strong, counter shading patterns are more pronounced, balancing out those strong shadows.

在明亮的栖息地，如草原和沙漠，阴影特别强烈，反阴影模式更明显，平衡那些强烈的阴影。

And you can see that like the kind of counter shading that you have here, this light on the side really sort of mixes well with diffused light that we get here.

就像你在这里看到的那种逆向阴影一样，侧面的光线与这里的漫射光混合的相得益彰。

We still don't know which explanation is right or if maybe counter shading serves a different function for different animals and for some species, counter shading might not have to do with shadows at all.

我们仍然不知道哪种解释是正确的，或者反阴影是否对不同的动物和某些物种有不同的作用，反阴影可能根本与阴影无关。

So got shadows, and you might jump out to a predator but smooth your contrast with counter shading and you may be harder to pick out even if you don't completely disappear.

所以有了阴影，你会被捕食者一览无余，但是用反阴影降低你的对比度，即使你没有完全消失，你也可能更难被认出来。

Even if real animals don't completely disappear like Thayer's painted birds, counter shading could still make them harder to detect because many animals visual systems work by zeroing in on contrast, the difference between light and dark in a scene.

即使真正的动物不会像塞耶画的鸟一样完全消失，反阴影仍然会使它们更难被发现，因为许多动物的视觉系统是通过聚焦对比度来工作的，对比度是场景中明暗的区别。

In some ways, the explanation seems too obvious not to be true, for instance, some animals that hang out upside down like these caterpillars have reverse counter shading so their bellies are darker and their backs are lighter.

在某些方面，这种解释似乎太明显了，不可能是真的，例如，一些像毛毛虫一样倒挂的动物有反向的阴影，所以它们的腹部更暗，背部更轻。