Scientists donât know why the stripes help.
Tim Caro, a biologist at the University of California, Davis, believes it has to do with the zebraâs stripes. “I think that the key is that the stripes’ thickness and orientation is not consistent, either within a stripe or across them,” she says. Choose an animal that you've always wanted to learn more about. But that can’t be true: Amanda Melin of the University of Calgary recently showed that lions and hyenas can’t even make out the stripes unless they get very close. Luckily for the zebra, the hungry fly doesnât land on it. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. All rights reserved. Answer the questions below to plan an investigation about that animal. And now a question that has puzzled biologists since the days of Darwin - why do zebras have stripes? When it comes to biting insects, zebras are doubly cursed. All Rights Reserved. The team found the same trend when they put striped coats on the horses. “You get a quarter as many landings,” Caro said. “There are enormous benefits to having a striped coat for a horse,” he told me. The fly is tiny, but it can be a big problem. As Caro suspected, evidence showed that the stripes discourage flies from landing. But when Caro and his team looked at the videos zoomed-in and in slow motion, they saw two very different behaviors: When a horsefly was about to land on a horse, it slowed down and extended its legs right before landing. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future.
These insects use optic flow to gauge their own speed and their distance from nearby objects. “Now that we know striped coats work just as well as stripes on real zebras, we can really play around with them,” he said. Now itâs your turn to plan an investigation of an animal. Some guessed the patterns distract predators, allowing zebras to escape attacks. Several vendors were already selling coats with black-and-white stripes, often as fun gimmicks. Instead, they landed on the uncovered head of the horse which didnât have any stripes. Nearby, a horsefly is buzzing around looking for food too. CHANG: Well, Martin How has a few hypotheses for that. HOW: We then decided to essentially dress horses up as zebras and then look at the different effects that these had on the amount of biting flies coming to land. But Caroâs findings show that the stripes are an adaptation that helps keep the flies away. It's for the development of their offspring. The scientists found that far fewer flies landed on zebras than on horses. “We can put on coats with very wide stripes, or different orientations, or gray stripes. But now researchers have found a black-and-white checkered pattern will, too — making them question the optical effect behind the phenomenon. Caro wanted to know: Do zebra stripes stop flies from biting? But now researchers have found a black-and-white checkered pattern will, too — … And thus an experiment was born. We want to hear what you think about this article. ), If Gonzalez-Bellido is right, a more evenly striped coat should offer less protection. But, one by one, the most commonly proposed explanations have all been refuted. Stripes, for some reason, seem to help. âBut not enough people ask, âWhy?ââ. Zebras live in parts of the world that have the most horseflies that carry disease. Caro said that they might treat the black stripes like a pair of trees, try to fly between them, and end up colliding with the white stripes. Cloaked in stripes, the very same animals suddenly became more resistant to flies, except on their uncovered heads. CHANG: You see, he says stripes might create an illusion that, to a fly's eyes, looks something like a rotating barbershop pole, and that confuses them. Another hypothesis says that the black stripes heat up faster than the white ones, setting up circulating air currents that cool the zebras. But, one by one, the most commonly proposed explanations have all been refuted. “I wouldn’t want to suggest that horse-wear companies sell striped livery for their riders yet,” he said. Something’s clearly throwing them off, but the details are still a mystery. Accuracy and availability may vary. “I think that a striped T-shirt might work very nicely.”. HOW: Our new findings suggest that zebras could equally be checkered. CHANG: But the work does have one huge implication. The flies had no problem finding the zebras or approaching them, but couldn’t stick the landing. HOW: Maybe they're striving to generate convection currents on the skins and make them sort of cool down in that - in the hot weather. Read: In Bolivia, people in zebra costumes direct traffic, Paloma Gonzalez-Bellido of the University of Minnesota, who studies insect vision, favors the latter idea. Caro followed these steps of the scientific … Why?
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