It's something my people do-- a gift, the Church calls it. It's really just something we evolved. ...or were made to evolve.

We don't just change colours. When we're put in an alien situation, even our personalities can change to try to blend in. My father had this thing he said.

[He intones it, doing a not inaccurate and not very fond impression of his father:] 'So a lone Eutermesan in the den of a lion can survive, by learning to growl as it does'.

I don't think it's a gift. I think it's a weakness. A whole species full of gullible dupes, that's what we were bred to be.