by gcanyon on 11/5/22, 7:21 PM
"the source of the effect remains unexplained" They list several candidate explanations, but miss one I came up with immediately: maybe zebras are in some other way less attractive targets for the flies -- their skin is thicker, their blood/fluids don't taste as good, etc. -- and the stripes are simply a visual indicator to the flies that they are zebras, and therefore less desirable. This sort of trait has evolved poison frogs, insects, and other plants and animals, so why not zebras?
by protomyth on 11/5/22, 5:54 PM
Our findings confirm that zebra stripes repel biting flies under naturalistic conditions and do so at close rangeWhich has lead to suggestions to breed this into livestock. Which will certainly change the landscape in US.
As I said before: Somehow driving through South Dakota looking out over a vast field of seaweed eating, zebra striped cows was not the future I anticipated as a youth.
by lifeisstillgood on 11/5/22, 6:07 PM
That's fantastic. I so needed something that hit "I never knew that" and "not remotely connected to tech and jobs and mortgages".
Well done World for funding simple scientific questions - not trying to fix the planet, just asking "why does that happen".
Marvellous
One (morbid) thought - I wonder if lions get bitten less when heads down in a black and white carcass?
by bmitc on 11/5/22, 6:55 PM
I recently learned this from BBC's Life in Colour documentary. It explained it, similar to the article (although the paper really dances around this hypothesis), that the flies had a hard time landing due to some visual weirdness from the stripes when the flies are close up. They had a lot of close-up footage of flies hovering above a zebra's skin but seemingly confused on how to land.
by therusskiy on 11/5/22, 7:19 PM
Zebra stripes are basically an adversarial pattern for Neural Net in a fly's brain.
by WalterBright on 11/5/22, 6:36 PM
I wonder why outdoor apparel makers don't make zebra striped clothing.
by divbzero on 11/6/22, 1:32 AM
by Sharlin on 11/5/22, 11:11 PM
The idea that vertical stripes confuse a fly’s visual processing reminds me of Peter Watts’s Blindsight, in which vampire legends are based on a real H. sapiens subspecies that predated on baseline humans in the Paleolithic but went extinct once we started building permanent settlements. This was caused by an (un)fortunate bug in the vampires’ visual cortex that made them unable to perceive right angles without glitching out (this, naturally, would also have been the source of the belief that vampires are repulsed by crosses). As a biologist, Watts was no doubt aware of the zebra stripe hypothesis when he wrote Blindsight.
by bilsbie on 11/5/22, 6:37 PM
My idea (consider this public domain / prior art if no one has though of it)
We introduce tree frogs or perhaps geckos or chameleons to live on cows. They would eat the flies and the body heat could probably keep them warm year round.
They’d eventually breed themselves to adapt to the life cycle and be self perpetuating.
by moralestapia on 11/5/22, 11:47 PM
This hypothesis has never made sense from an evolutionary standpoint, as it doesn't explain why zebras are the only animal (on a similar environment) that show this traita.
by rossdavidh on 11/6/22, 1:01 AM
Anyone know if this has been tried on mosquitoes? Unfortunately, they probably rely too much on smell over vision...
by chatterhead on 11/6/22, 3:12 AM
Obviously, the only way to actual test if it's the stripes or not is to test it on Beetlejuice.
by amelius on 11/5/22, 9:24 PM
And at night?
by codefeenix on 11/6/22, 9:10 AM
What about wavelength reflected by zebras versus(or compared to) waht flies can perceive?
by kjkjadksj on 11/6/22, 1:33 AM
Maybe zebra print socks will stop these ankle biting mosquitos that have invaded california
by lttlrck on 11/5/22, 6:26 PM
I need zebra patterned socks.
by manmal on 11/5/22, 7:25 PM
I thought this has been common knowledge for decades.