Why The Predator Couldn't See Dutch (It’s Not Just The Mud)

The Predator stands close enough to touch Arnold Schwarzenegger, shoots the rat on the log beside him, and walks away. The usual answer is "the mud". The movie gave you the rest of it 49 minutes earlier, at 31:04, the first time it lets you look through the hunter's eyes: warm things glow, everything else turns blue. So the yard checks three things. What the Predator actually sees (heat, long-wave infrared, which is why the 1986 production had to bring a real Inframetrics thermal scanner into the Mexican jungle: infrared film can't see body heat). What the mud actually does (it doesn't block heat at all: wet soil is nearly as good an emitter as skin, so the mud only hides Dutch while it's cold, and the river and the wet clay make it cold). And how long it lasts (pigs, Corridor Crew's Texas test, the river that washes it off in the finale, and what real armies use instead). Verdict: COLD. Another day in the yard!!!! CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 1:03 Two brothers and a door at Fox 2:03 Van Damme, Stan Winston and a man who couldn't see 3:07 31:04: the first heat-vision shot 4:01 Why film can't see body heat 5:06 To that camera, you're a lamp 5:47 The waterfall and the mud 6:40 What the mud actually does 8:33 The clock: pigs and drying mud 9:46 When the trick stops working 10:40 What real armies use 12:14 Verdict Narrated by: Me :) SOURCES - Predator (1987), dir. John McTiernan, written by Jim and John Thomas; heat-vision shots logged from the film (first at 31:04; Dutch at 40:37 and 76:48; the cold POV at 79:48; "He couldn't see me." 80:51; "Only in the hottest years this happens." 64:27) - If It Bleeds We Can Kill It: The Making of Predator (20th Century Fox, 2001), with 1986 location interviews: John McTiernan, Jim and John Thomas, Stan Winston, Kevin Peter Hall, Carl Weathers, Joel Hynek, Scott Eddo - Les Paul Robley, "Predator: Special Visual Effects", Cinefantastique (Dec 1987), via Wikipedia, "Predator (film)" (infrared film vs the Inframetrics thermal scanner; three weeks in mud; cold water; Van Damme and the suit; Kevin Peter Hall rehearsing with the head off) - J. Steketee, "Spectral emissivity of skin and pericardium", Physics in Medicine & Biology 18(5): 686-694 (1973), doi:10.1088/0031-9155/18/5/307 - Teledyne FLIR, Reference documentation: Thermography, emissivity tables (human skin 0.98; soil saturated with water 0.95) - Wikipedia, "Infrared photography" (infrared film: about 700-900 nm) - M.B.M. Bracke, "Review of wallowing in pigs: Description of the behaviour and its motivational basis", Applied Animal Behaviour Science 132(1-2): 1-13 (2011), doi:10.1016/j.applanim.2011.01.002; Live Science, "Why Pigs Love Mud" (2011) - Corridor Crew, "Can Mud ACTUALLY hide you from Predator???" (2023): their mud test, credited and summarised - Saab, "Let's talk about tech: How multispectral camouflage makes you invisible" (Barracuda); Military Times, "New ponchos look to make troops invisible to infrared, thermal scopes" (2024) - The Engineer, "BAE Systems' Adaptiv infra-red 'invisibility cloak' for military vehicles" (2011) - Pulsar Vision, "How weather impacts thermal imaging for hunting" (temperature differences shrink in the heat) FOOTAGE Film clips from Predator (1987) are used under fair use for commentary and criticism. Clips and footage via: Cyber Chaos Crew (If It Bleeds We Can Kill It, 20th Century Fox), Stan Winston School, Sandy Wolf (Inframetrics 740), Alexandre Lachausse (Solitude, infrared timelapse), LiveTIR, Dahua Technology, Rabbit Hole Farm at Cowichan Bay, WildFilmsIndia, Saab, Military Times, The Engineer UK, DVIDS (Camp Atterbury). Photo: James Cameron by Kevin Paul, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.