You must be logged in to post a comment. I have heard all the various theories concerning zebra stripes over the years, and my inclination is that several could be true at the same time, as you pointed out. In any case, wearing dark blue or black clothing when touring in tsetse fly areas is a certain way to attract those pesky beasts, so I wonder….
I thought Zebea has got stripes to confuse predators. The fly theory is a new one to me. Maybe stripey clothes will help us humans. James, it is not possibly the type of paint they used that deter the biting little buggers? But interesting theory none the less. Interesting point Gawie. It would be great to see the experiment repeated with a different type of paint…. The Japanese scientists actually considered the paint!
They painted some cows just with entirely black stripes, and some cows with black and white stripes. The black-striped cows had flies settle on them and bite them at the same rate as unstriped cows, whereas black and white stripes confuse flies.
Interestingly, this only works up close. All of them attract flies from a distance, but fewer flies settle on stripes. The U. Basically they just bumped into the animal, then decided not to settle.
Last, zebras react more than horses when they have a fly on them. They swish their tails, bite at the fly, and even run away. Hang in there. There is actually a scientific report on this topic, from which the tweets etc.
These guys in an earlier paper noted that the tsetse fly range and the range of zebras overlap to a great degree. The scientists in Britain also noted zebras swish their tails a lot, and even run away from flies, so there are other reasons they get bitten less than horses and presumably cows!
Equids do appear susceptible to some diseases spread by flies according to a study by the guys who coated horses with stripes. Zebras have shorter coats than other horses because they live in hotter weather, and some wild horses have mild stripes on their legs.
Hi Alex, Thanks for this, some great info! I suspect that most Zebra are killed in the pitch dark by Lions. It could be that Zebra could get away without stripes given any available light.
A fair analysis of the camouflage theory might have to take account of typical light conditions afoot when kills are made. Not that stripes prevent Zebra from being killed in the pitch dark but that it could be the only time when it makes a difference. Ok — my own wild pet theory. Our best photographs are available for purchase in digital format from the Londolozi Live Fine Art Store, via credit card. Purchasable photos are tagged with the Fine Art Store icon:.
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Our emails are made to shine in your inbox, with something fresh every morning, afternoon, and weekend. Zebras are famous for their contrasting black and white stripes—but until very recently no one really knew why they sport their unusual striped pattern. Since then many ideas have been put on the table but only in the last few years have there been serious attempts to test them. These ideas fall into four main categories: Zebras are striped to evade capture by predators, zebras are striped for social reasons, zebras are striped to keep cool, or they have stripes to avoid attack by biting flies.
Only the last one stands up to scrutiny. And our latest research helps fill in more of the details on why. There are many problems with this idea. And when fleeing from danger, zebras do not behave in ways to maximize any confusion possibly caused by striping, making hypothetical ideas about dazzling predators untenable. Worse still for this idea, the eyesight of lions and spotted hyenas is much weaker than ours; these predators can only resolve stripes when zebras are very close up, at a distance when they can likely hear or smell the prey anyway.
So stripes are unlikely to be of much use in anti-predator defense. Most damaging, zebras are a preferred prey item for lions —in study after study across Africa, lions kill them more than might be expected from their numerical abundance. So stripes cannot be a very effective anti-predator defense against this important carnivore.
So much for the evading-predators hypothesis. What about the idea that stripes help zebras engage with members of their own species? Every zebra has a unique pattern of striping. Could it be useful in individual recognition? This possibility seems highly unlikely given that uniformly colored domestic horses can recognize other individuals by sight and sound. Striped members of the horse family do not groom each other —a form of social bonding—more than unstriped equid species either.
And very unusual unstriped individual zebras are not shunned by group members , and they breed successfully. Bonus zebra: Quaqqa Equus quagga The quagga was a plains zebra that lived in South Africa until extinction in the late 19th century. Its unique colouring of a striped head and neck fading into a solid coat towards its rump made it look something like a cross between a zebra and a horse. Genetics causing selective pigmentation determines the variety of striping in any given animal.
The resulting pattern is completely unique to each zebra, much like a human fingerprint. Zebras have dark skin beneath their fur 2. Why zebras evolved to have such unique black and white stripes is a question that scientists — and the average safari-goer — have been asking for well over a century. Six theories have been put forward over the years, and recently there seems to have been a renewed interest, with scientists such as Tim Caro testing and investigating many of the theories, all of which fall into four categories:.
Could zebra stripes work to help camouflage them from their main predators, lions and hyenas? Lions are actually color blind. If you can only see black, white and shades of gray a single colour dark animal standing in light-coloured tall grass or under trees would be very obvious. Alfred Russel Wallace first put forward the theory in his book Darwinism :. A variation on the camouflage theme. To a predator, a group of zebras could look blended into one large striped animal, too big to take on — particularly when the zebras move in a herd.
The illusion would have the added benefit to zebras of making it difficult for predators to pick out a single animal to attack. As each zebra has their own unique striping pattern, one theory states that their stripes might act as a unique identifier, allowing individuals to recognize one another. This theory is highly unlikely to be the why zebras have stripes, given that a uniformly coloured horses are able to recognize other individuals by sight and sound, and b unusual unstriped zebras have been observed mingling happily with a herd and breeding successfully.
His take here is that zebra stripes may in some way help males and females decide who they will mate with. A theory that has been around since the s and has gained traction in recent years is that zebra stripes evolved to help them avoid bites from flies carrying diseases such as African horse sickness, trypanosomiasis, and the potentially fatal equine influenza.
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