Even animal cooperation and coloration adapt precisely to current environmental conditions

Evidence

The example of the dunnocks looking after their young emphasizes how the cooperative behaviour of animals may be exquisitely tuned to current conditions. … Not only do such grasshoppers match their black environment, they prefer to settle on such backgrounds. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 429

Categorization

• SHARE: The grasshopper color-shift trigger is a wonderfully specific fact useful if discussing phenotypic plasticity; sent to a biologist friend would land well.
• XREF: Contrasts with Saramago’s blindness: grasshoppers adapt phenotypically to a changed environment, while Saramago’s humans fail to adapt — plasticity is the pivot on which trust/order depends.