 Similar principles can be applied for military purposes , for instance when a sniper wears a ghillie suit designed to be further camouflaged by decoration with materials such as tufts of grass from the sniper 's immediate environment . Such suits were used as early as 1916 , the British army having adopted " coats of motley hue and stripes of paint " for snipers . Cott takes the example of the larva of the blotched emerald moth , which fixes a screen of fragments of leaves to its specially hooked bristles , to argue that military camouflage uses the same method , pointing out that the " device is ... essentially the same as one widely practised during the Great War for the concealment , not of caterpillars , but of caterpillar @-@ tractors , [ gun ] battery positions , observation posts and so forth . " 
