Connie Shinn, age 11, of Leaksvillu, N.C., for her question:

Do some animals look like plants?

There are some animals that loop so much like plants that they can fool you. The Australian sea horse wears scarfs of trailing skin between the chinks of his armor. Even if you scooped him out of the waters of his coral reef, you might mistake him for a wad of seaweed. The lovely corals themselves could be mistaken for plants, even when you know that they are the stony apartment houses made by small sea creatures. Down on the sea floor you might think you had found a garden of chubby shrubs and bushes, only to find that they are sponges which are members of the animal kingdom.

There are also countless land animals which mimic the plant world. The cleverest of these copy cats are certain insects. The walking stick is a long, thin fellow with long, thin legs who looks exactly like a bundle of small twigs. The praying mantis looks like a twig of green leaves, and the large, green wings of the buffalo treehopper are even veined like leaves. The crysalis of the monarch butterfly looks exactly like the furled leaf of a milkweed, which is the plant on which it sleeps.

Some of this mimicry is accidental and some is not. There seems to be no good reason why sponges and corals look like members of the plant world. But there are very good reasons why the sea horse looks like a bunch of seaweed and why many insects look like the plants on which they live. These fellows are safer when they match their backgrounds, for then they are not so noticeable to their enemies. This trick is one of the most successful in the whole world of nature. Almost every living creature tends to blend in with his background, whether he is a hunter or one of the hunted. And usually his background is the plant world.

We call this trick of Mother Nature camouflage or protective coloration. A brown grey bunny can sit safely in a carpet of dry fallen leaves. If he does not move, chances are you will pass him by without seeing him   and, so will his enemies. On the African plains, the gaily colored zebra blends in with the stripes of vivid sunlight and dark shadow in the tall grasses. The giraffe matches the blotches off' sunlight and shadow among his acacia trees. In the far north, the ermine wears a coat of winter vrhite to match the snow and a brown coat to match the brown summer earth.

Some gaily colored birds, of course, contrast very strongly with their natural backgrounds. But in such cases it is usually only the father bird who wears such outstanding colors. The mother bird wears drab colors which blend into her background as she sits unnoticed on her precious nest. There are only a few animals who can actually be mistaken for plants. But, throughout the world of nature, almost all the animals tend to blend in with their plant backgrounds.