Animal Camouflage Reading Answers

IELTS has four parts: Reading, Listening, Writing, and Speaking. The Reading test checks if you can understand a passage, find specific details, and follow how ideas are developed from one paragraph to the next.

Animal Camouflage explains how animals hide from enemies, or from the animals they hunt. It covers four types of camouflage: background matching, disruptive coloration, countershading, and mimicry. Each type comes with a list of animals, so the passage has a lot of names to keep track of.

This page gives you a practice version of that passage, 13 questions, and the full animal camouflage reading answers with explanations.  

Here’s the Animal Camouflage reading answer key for your reference:

Question	Answer
1	TRUE
2	TRUE
3	FALSE
4	NOT GIVEN
5	predator and prey
6	protective colouring
7	blend in
8	alter their colouring
9	on many backgrounds
10	stripes or spots
11	colour-blind
12	countershading
13	black backs

These are the answers for Animal Camouflage Reading Answers. You can now attempt the practice test below and then check your answers with the explanations to understand how each response is supported by the passage.

Animal Camouflage IELTS Reading Passage for Practice

This IELTS reading test passage focuses on why you can’t see a flounder on the sea floor, or a stick insect on a branch. And why do zebras have stripes when a lion can’t even see colour? This passage looks at how animals use colour, pattern and shape to stay hidden.

Read it carefully, then answer the questions. Aim to finish in about 20 minutes.

A
Charles Darwin put forward the theory of natural selection almost 150 years ago. It says that animals with traits that help them survive tend to live longer and have more young. Over thousands of years, those helpful traits become common in the gene pool. Camouflage is a classic example. Animals that hide from their enemies, whether hunters or hunted, pass on the genes for their protective colouring, and each generation improves it a little. In time, the colouring suits the animal’s habitat and way of life. Scientists describe four types of camouflage: background matching, disruptive coloration, countershading and mimicry.

B
Many animals use background matching, also called crypsis, to blend in with their surroundings. Chipmunks and gophers are the colour of dirt, praying mantises and tree frogs are leaf-green, and mackerel and sharks are ocean-grey. Some animals change colour when the seasons change or when they move to a new place. The arctic fox and the snowshoe hare grow white fur in winter to match the snow and ice, then a brown coat in warmer weather that blends in with the woodland. Some reptiles and fish can change their look at once. The green anole turns from green to brown as it moves through leaves and branches. The flounder and other flatfish match not only the colour of the ocean floor but also its silty or sandy texture.

C
Most animals can’t change their appearance so easily. Background matching works only in one setting, and it often means staying still for a long time. For many animals, a better plan is a pattern that works on many backgrounds. It blends in with all of them but doesn’t match any one perfectly.

D
Disruptive coloration uses a pattern, such as stripes or spots, to break up the outline of the body. This confuses onlookers, who find it hard to pick out the shape of a single animal. The more the colours contrast, as with a tiger’s stripes, the stronger the effect. It works well for animals that live in herds. Zebras blend in less with their background than with one another. A lion sees a mass of moving stripes and has trouble choosing one target. A lone zebra, though, may use background matching in tall grass, where its stripes merge with the green and yellow stalks. The colours don’t matter to a lion, because it is colour-blind.

E
Animals with countershading usually have a dark back and a light belly. This changes how an onlooker sees their three-dimensional shape and makes them harder to spot in sunlight. It can also make an animal look evenly dark and flat. Caterpillars use this effect to look flat, so they blend in with tree bark.

F
Countershading is also useful to birds and sea animals, which are usually seen against a bright background from below and a dark one from above. Hawks use it to hide from the small birds and rodents they hunt. In flight, the dark back soaks up sunlight from above, while the light underside reflects light from below, which reduces the shadows that could give the bird away. When a hawk is on the ground or in a tree, its mottled brown feathers blend in with branches and leaves. Penguins use countershading too. Their white chests and black backs stand out on land, but they vanish in the water, where penguins spend most of their time. To an observer looking down, a penguin is almost invisible in dark water. To an animal in deeper water looking up, the white chest looks like a beam of sunlight.

G
Mimicry, or masquerading, doesn’t hide an animal. It makes the animal look like something else. Walking stick insects are almost impossible to tell from twigs. Katydids look so much like green leaves that leaf-eating insects have been seen trying to chew them.

H
One kind of mimicry, called aposematism, means pretending to be an animal that is unpleasant or even dangerous. Predators leave the bad-tasting monarch butterfly alone, and they also avoid the tasty viceroy, which looks like it. The harmless scarlet snake copies the red, black and yellow bands of the coral snake, but in a different order. The coral snake’s bands run black, yellow, red, yellow, while the scarlet snake’s run red, black, yellow, black. Some moths use big spots on their wings that look like the eyes of a large animal, and the hawk moth caterpillar has a pattern on its rear that looks like a snake’s head.

I
Some predators use aggressive mimicry, looking harmless so that they can catch prey by surprise. Small animals are not afraid of turkey vultures, which are scavengers and not hunters. When the zone-tailed hawk, which looks similar, flies with a group of turkey vultures, it can find and target living prey easily.

J
No single type of camouflage works best in every situation. Many animals use more than one technique to avoid being seen by the animals that hunt them and by the animals they hunt.

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Animal Camouflage Reading Practice Questions

Now test yourself. The questions ask you to judge statements against the passage and to complete a summary using words from the text.

Watch out for paraphrasing. The questions rarely use the same words as the passage.

Questions 1–4: True, False, Not Given

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage?

Write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
 FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
 NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1. Animals with helpful traits tend to produce more offspring.
2. Darwin was the first person to describe the four types of camouflage.
3. The Arctic fox keeps its white fur all year round.
4. Disruptive coloration is stronger when the colours contrast more.

Questions 5–13: Summary Completion

Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 5–13.

Hiding in Plain Sight: Birds and Mimics

Hawks use countershading to hide from the small birds and 5 ______ they hunt. In flight, their dark backs soak up sunlight, while their light undersides reflect light and reduce 6 ______. On the ground or in a tree, their 7 ______ brown feathers blend in with branches and leaves. Penguins have white chests and black backs. Seen from above, they are almost invisible in 8 ______. Seen from below, the white chest looks like a beam of 9 ______.

Some animals use mimicry instead. Walking stick insects are hard to tell apart from 10 ______. Leaf-eating insects have been seen trying to chew 11 ______ because they look like green leaves. The harmless scarlet snake copies the bands of the 12 ______ snake. The zone-tailed hawk flies with turkey vultures, which are 13 ______ and not hunters, so small animals are not afraid of it. 

Also Read:
IELTS Syllabus	IELTS Test Format	IELTS Exam Pattern

Animal Camouflage Reading Answers with Explanation

Done with the questions? Use the animal camouflage reading answers with location below to check each response. You’ll see where each answer sits in the passage, and where the common traps are.

Answers 1–4: True, False, Not Given

Answer 1: TRUE
Paragraph A says animals with traits that help them survive tend to live longer and have more young. The question turns “have more young” into “produce more offspring”. Same idea, different words.
 Answer location: Paragraph A, sentence 2

Answer 2: NOT GIVEN
Paragraph A names Darwin and the theory of natural selection, and then says scientists describe four types of camouflage. It never says who first described them. The name Darwin is a trap here. He’s in the passage, but not for this.
 Answer location: Paragraph A, sentence 6; no information on this

Answer 3: FALSE
Paragraph B says the Arctic fox grows white fur in winter and a brown coat in warmer weather. So it doesn’t keep white fur all year. The words “all year round” are the clue.
 Answer location: Paragraph B, sentence 4

Answer 4: TRUE
Paragraph D says the more the colours contrast, the stronger the effect, and gives the tiger’s stripes as an example. “Stronger when the colours contrast more” matches this closely.
 Answer location: Paragraph D, sentence 3

Answers 5–13: Summary Completion

Answer 5: rodents
Paragraph F says hawks hide from “the small birds and rodents they hunt”. The summary has the first part, so the missing word is what comes next. It’s one word, which fits the limit.
 Answer location: Paragraph F, sentence 2

Answer 6: shadows
Paragraph F says the light underside reduces the shadows that could give the bird away. The summary says “reduce ______”, so the plural noun is the answer. Copy it as it appears.
 Answer location: Paragraph F, sentence 3

Answer 7: mottled
Paragraph F says a hawk’s mottled brown feathers blend in with branches and leaves. The gap comes before “brown”, so it needs a describing word. You can find it by scanning for “branches and leaves”.
 Answer location: Paragraph F, sentence 4

Answer 8: dark water
Paragraph F says that to an observer looking down, a penguin is almost invisible in dark water. Both words are needed, and that’s allowed under the two-word limit. If you wrote only “water”, you’d lose the meaning of “dark”.
 Answer location: Paragraph F, sentence 7

Answer 9: sunlight
The same paragraph says that to an animal looking up from deeper water, the white chest looks like a beam of sunlight. The word after “of” fills the gap. Watch out for the earlier mention of sunlight about hawks. The question is about penguins.
 Answer location: Paragraph F, last sentence

Answer 10: twigs
Paragraph G says walking stick insects are almost impossible to tell from twigs. The summary uses “hard to tell apart from”, which is the paraphrase. Write the plural form.
 Answer location: Paragraph G, sentence 3

Answer 11: katydids
Paragraph G says katydids look so much like green leaves that leaf-eating insects have been seen trying to chew them. The summary swaps the order, so the gap is the animal being chewed. Don’t write “leaves”, because the question says “because they look like green leaves”.
 Answer location: Paragraph G, sentence 4

Answer 12: coral
Paragraph H says the scarlet snake copies the bands of the coral snake. The summary already has the word “snake” after the gap, so you only need “coral”. One word.
 Answer location: Paragraph H, sentence 3

Answer 13: scavengers
Paragraph I says turkey vultures are scavengers and not hunters, which is why small animals aren’t afraid of them. The word “hunters” is in the summary too, so the missing word is the one that goes with “not hunters”.
 Answer location: Paragraph I, sentence 2

Check out: How to Register for the IELTS Exam 2026 in India?

Important Vocabulary for Animal Camouflage IELTS Reading Passage

This passage uses a lot of science words, and the questions often swap them for simpler ones. Learn the main ones before you try again.

Word	Meaning
Camouflage	Colours or patterns that help an animal hide
Natural selection	The process where helpful traits become more common over time
Gene pool	All the genes in a group of animals
Offspring	The young of an animal
Background matching (crypsis)	Blending in with the surroundings
Disruptive coloration	A pattern that breaks up the outline of the body
Countershading	A dark back and a light belly that make an animal harder to see
Mimicry	Looking like something else
Aposematism	Copying a harmful or bad-tasting animal as a warning
Predator	An animal that hunts other animals
Scavenger	An animal that eats dead animals instead of hunting
Mottled	Marked with patches of different colours

Try using three or four of these words in your own sentences. It helps you remember them, and you’ll recognise their paraphrases faster in the test.

How to Approach Animal Camouflage IELTS Reading Questions?

This passage is easy to follow, but it lists a lot of animals, and it’s easy to mix up which one belongs to which type. The trick is to know the four types first, and then use the animals as landmarks. Work out what each question wants, find the right paragraph, and then read that part carefully.

Here are a few simple ways to approach the animal camouflage IELTS reading answers:

1. Identify Keywords and Their Synonyms

Underline the main words in the question and think of other words with the same meaning. The passage will probably use those.

In the question	In the passage
produce more offspring	have more young
keeps its white fur all year round	grows a brown coat in warmer weather
when the colours contrast more	the more the colours contrast
hard to tell apart from	almost impossible to tell from

So don’t search for the exact words. Search for the idea.

2. Understand the Four Types of Animal Camouflage

If you know the four types, the passage is much easier to follow. Here they are in short:

Type	The idea	An example from the passage
Background matching	Blend in with the surroundings	Flounder on the ocean floor
Disruptive coloration	Break up the body’s outline	Zebras in a herd
Countershading	Dark back, light belly	Penguins and hawks
Mimicry	Look like something else	Walking stick insects

Each type has its own paragraphs, so a question about stripes goes to D, and a question about twigs goes to G.

3. Scan for Animal Examples and Supporting Details

Animal names are easy to scan for. Use them as landmarks:

• Arctic fox, green anole, flounder → Paragraph B
• Zebra, lion, tiger → Paragraph D
• Caterpillar → Paragraph E
• Hawk, penguin → Paragraph F
• Walking stick insect, katydid → Paragraph G
• Monarch, viceroy, coral snake, scarlet snake → Paragraph H
• Zone-tailed hawk, turkey vulture → Paragraph I

Once you find the clue, read the whole sentence. A matching name on its own doesn’t always give the answer. Hawks, for example, appear in both Paragraph F and Paragraph I, and the two paragraphs are about different things.

4. Follow the Instructions for Each Question Type

Read the instructions before every task, because they change what counts as a correct answer.

For True/False/Not Given, if the passage says the same thing, it’s True. If it says the opposite, it’s False. If it doesn’t say anything about it, it’s Not Given. For summary completion, the gaps follow the order of the passage, so move down the paragraph as you fill them in. NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS means one or two, never three. Copy the words exactly, and read your answer back inside the sentence to check that it fits.

5. Check Your Answers Against the Passage

Before you move on, go back to the sentence that gave you the answer. Does it really say what you wrote?

When you finish, check each answer once more. Did you copy the word correctly? Did you write the plural when the gap needed it? Did you pick True when the passage didn’t say it? Small slips like these can lose you marks you had already earned. And spend about 20 minutes on one passage. If you get stuck, mark the question and come back.

Looking for more IELTS Reading practice? Read these answer guides to practise different passage topics and question types: The Origin of Writing Reading Answers The Big Sleep Reading Answers Bird Migration Reading Answers with Explanations Eco Tourism Reading Answers Pine Trees IELTS Reading Answers 2026: Questions & Explanations

Conclusion

Animal Camouflage shows how animals use colour, pattern and shape to hide, and how some even pretend to be something else. The ideas are simple, but there are many animals and four types of camouflage to keep apart. Short labels for each paragraph, and animal names as landmarks, keep you on track.

When you check the animal camouflage reading answers, don’t only look at what you got wrong. Look at how you got there. Did you mix up two paragraphs about the same animal? Did you miss a paraphrase? Spotting that is what improves your score. For more practice, try a few more Animal Camouflage IELTS reading answer sets, and time yourself each time.

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