Zen cones

A reader is inspired to reminiscense:

I was hired by the local government to cut costs on emergency equipment by standing by the side of the road and warning drivers about upcoming roadwork.

Roadcone cosplay is not recommended in New Zealand, where the Kea is the Roadcone's main natural predator, for Keas are bitey little buggers.


The other natural predator of roadcones -- in Christchurch at least -- is the Mitsubishi sedan.

Cones have evolved a number of ways to disguise themselves from their enemies.

They masquerade with equal ease as flower-pots, as a giraffe and as the Duke of Wellington's head.

In groups they can disguise themselves as a chessboard or a sea-urchin.

HA HA that one is not a camouflaged roadcone; it is a pink flamingo in the middle of the Polhill Reserve, possibly placed there as part of a guerilla marketing campaign to promote a theatrical reenactment of a John Waters movie.

The orange colouration comes from caretenoid pigments concentrated in the roadcone's outer layers to demonstrate its fitness to potential mates and thereby improve its reproductive success. Except in Japan, where they come in all colours (including black and white) because Japan.

I for one am concerned that these chromatic aberrations are introduced to other countries, they will out-compete the orange variety, in the manner of grey skwirls. One can only hope that they only look like road cones and are in fact a variety of Kasa-obake.

http://www.contractormag.co.nz/contractor/feature/road-cones/