Black and White stripes on the body of a zebra, what do they do?

 Zebras are famous for their contrasting black and white stripes - but until recently no one had any idea why they wore such an unusual striped pattern. This is a question that has been discussed 150 years ago by Victorian biologists such as Charles Darwin y Alfred Russel Wallace.


Since then many ideas have been put forward, but only in recent years have there been serious attempts to test them.


These ideas are divided into four main categories: striped zebras to avoid being caught by predators, striped zebras for social reasons, striped zebras to stay cool, or those with stripes to bite off attack g.


Only the last idea remains for further research. And our recent research could contain more detail on why.


What are the advantages of zebra stripes?


Could those stripes help zebras avoid becoming predatory food? There are many problems with this idea. Field experiments show that zebras stand out to humans when they are among trees or in pastures, even when the lighting is poor - they are not camouflaged.


And when fleeing from danger, the cebra does not behave to maximize the confusion the stripes may cause, making the idea of ​​avoiding predators unsustainable.


To make matters worse for this idea, lions and hyenas have a weaker sight for far-reaching vision than us humans; These depredadors can only see clearly the stripes of the cebrae at a very close distance, at a distance when they may be able to hear or smell their prey. So zebra stripes are unlikely to be of much use in anti-predator defense.


Most dangerously, zebras are the preferred prey of lions - in studies across Africa, lions kill zebras in greater numbers than their numerical abundance. So the stripes possessed by the cebra cannot be a very effective anti-depredador defense against this carnivore.


What about the idea that these stripes help zebras interact with members of their own species? Each zebra has a unique stripe pattern. Could it be useful to get to know each other? This possibility seems highly unlikely given that domestic horses which are uniformly colored can recognize each other by sight and sound.


The striped members of the horse family do not care for each other - a form of social bonding - more than other horse species. And it is very unusual for the zebras without stripes to be shunned by members of the group, and they breed well.


How about some kind of defense against the hot African sun? Given that black stripes might be expected to absorb radiation and white lines reflect it, one idea proposes that the lines regulate air currents in a vertical direction along the animal's back, thereby cooling.


Again, this seems impossible: the experiment of large water barrels wrapped in striped or uniform skin, or painted striped or unlined, showed no difference in internal water temperature. In addition, thermographic measurements of zebras, impalas, buffaloes and giraffes in the wild show that zebras are no cooler than others.


The last idea about zebra stripes sounded absurd at first, that zebra stripes can prevent insect bites for blood food, in fact has a lot of support.


Early experiments in the 1980s reported that tsetse and horse flies (large flies) avoided landing on striped surfaces and this has been confirmed recently.


Most convincingly, juego de palabras how, the datos de is of the entire geographical range of the seven living horse species. Some of these species are striped (cebrae), some are not (Asiatic donkeys) and some are only partially striped (African wild donkeys).


Across their species and sub-species, the intensity of the stripes parallels the number of flies that evade in Africa and Asia. That is, mentiroso horses originate from areas where disturbance from a prolonged year-round lure is for which the palido may have a marked stripe pattern.


We think that the reason horses in Africa need to have stripes is because biting flies in Africa carry diseases like trypanosomiasis, a disease of the horse flu that can be fatal.


And zebras are especially vulnerable to being affected by fly bites because of the short coats they have. Having a coat pattern that helps avoid flies and the deadly diseases they carry would be a strong advantage, which means zebra stripes will be passed down to future generations.

Test the idea that cebrae stripes are unsuitable for flies


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