Self-decoration camouflage is a method of camouflage in which animals or soldiers select materials, sometimes living, from the environment and attach these to themselves for concealment.
The method was described in 1889 by William Bateson, who observed Stenorhynchus decorator crabs. It was classified as "adventitious protection" by Edward Bagnall Poulton in 1890, and as "adventitious concealing coloration" or "adventitious resemblance" by Hugh Bamford Cott in 1940, who compared it to the way Australian aborigines stalked waterfowl, covering their faces with water lily leaves.
Among animals, self-decoration is found in decorator crabs, some insects such as caddis flies and the masked hunter bug, and occasionally also in octopuses. In military camouflage, it is seen in the use of ghillie suits by snipers and the helmet nets of soldiers more generally, when these are camouflaged by inserting grass and other local plant materials, and in a more general way by the use of decorated camouflage netting over vehicles, gun emplacements and observation posts.