A long time ago, I met a man named Rick Mikula, who raised butterflies. A machinist by trade, but laid-off from his job, Rick had been taking photographs in a park and thinking about what he wanted to do with his life.

In one of those “chance” meetings that in retrospect don’t seem to have been chance, he met a group of people who were banding Monarch butterflies.

It fascinated him, and started a long career not only raising and selling butterflies, but also educating a wide range of people about their life cycle, challenges to survival and best methods for raising them.

The chrysalis for the Monarch butterfly is striking – a lime shade of green with bright yellow dots ringing the top portion. One day on a whim Rick scraped off two of the yellow dots. When the butterfly emerged, it had two “normal” orange wings and two white wings. Who knew?

The Monarch butterfly basic color – orange – is not camouflage. Instead, orange and yellow are colors that mean “danger” to butterfly predators, and both the Monarch and the Viceroy that resembles it are poisonous to birds.

Would you think that a whitetail fawn could change its spot pattern? No matter where deer live – from Maine to Florida, from Michigan to the Mississippi Delta – fawns are born with spots. But in order to blend into those varying environments, are the spot patterns different?

Remember that spot pattern is an inherited trait and also a pattern that helps increase survival – if a fawn doesn’t blend in, it becomes a meal for a predator. Researchers theorized that if something changed in the deer’s environment, then the ensuing populations should respond to that change with a variance of traditional spot patterns.

Three separate deer populations were studied. Two of the three populations had a predictable spot pattern – the researchers could look at a picture of a fawn and determine with a level of certainty where the fawn had been born. In those two regions, the environment where the deer lived had remained relatively unchanged; the camouflage pattern continued to match the environment.

The third region studied was the Mississippi Delta area. That’s an area that has seen significant changes in land use. In fact, nearly three-quarters of the forest cover has been cleared for agricultural use. Researchers found that the fawn spot pattern had become disrupted; virtually, there was no distinct pattern – such as the identifiable patterns noted in the other two regions.

So, can fawns change their spots? The answer is yes, when it’s a necessity for survival. In other words, changes in land use patterns can cause changes in the animals that live in that habitat. Of course, the changes don’t take place in just a few generations – evolution takes time!