Zebras of all stripes repel biting flies at close range

"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?

<i>Our findings confirm that zebra stripes repel biting flies under naturalistic conditions and do so at close range</i><p>Which has lead to suggestions to breed this into livestock. Which will certainly change the landscape in US.<p>As I said before: <i>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.</i>

That&#x27;s fantastic. I so needed something that hit &quot;I never knew that&quot; and &quot;not remotely connected to tech and jobs and mortgages&quot;.<p>Well done World for funding simple scientific questions - not trying to fix the planet, just asking &quot;why does <i>that</i> happen&quot;.<p>Marvellous<p>One (morbid) thought - I wonder if lions get bitten less when heads down in a black and white carcass?

I recently learned this from BBC&#x27;s <i>Life in Colour</i> 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&#x27;s skin but seemingly confused on how to land.

Zebra stripes are basically an adversarial pattern for Neural Net in a fly&#x27;s brain.

I wonder why outdoor apparel makers don&#x27;t make zebra striped clothing.

Flies have been around since the Triassic [1] so could there be convergent evolution of zebra-like stripes at different points in Earth’s history, similar to how crab-like exoskeletons have evolved multiple times [2]?<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fly" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fly</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Carcinisation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Carcinisation</a>

The idea that vertical stripes confuse a fly’s visual processing reminds me of Peter Watts’s <i>Blindsight</i>, in which vampire legends are based on a real <i>H. sapiens</i> 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 <i>Blindsight</i>.

My idea (consider this public domain &#x2F; prior art if no one has though of it)<p>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.<p>They’d eventually breed themselves to adapt to the life cycle and be self perpetuating.

This hypothesis has never made sense from an evolutionary standpoint, as it doesn&#x27;t explain why zebras are the only animal (on a similar environment) that show this traita.

Anyone know if this has been tried on mosquitoes? Unfortunately, they probably rely too much on smell over vision...

Obviously, the only way to actual test if it&#x27;s the stripes or not is to test it on Beetlejuice.

And at night?

What about wavelength reflected by zebras versus(or compared to) waht flies can perceive?

Maybe zebra print socks will stop these ankle biting mosquitos that have invaded california

I need zebra patterned socks.

I thought this has been common knowledge for decades.