Scientists Just Solved The Mystery Of Why Zebras Have Stripes

Feb 21, 2019

Recently scientists have found about why zebras have stripes. It looks like that stripes makes terrible landings, it keeps the blood-sucking flies that try to feast on zebras and carry deadly disease away. Check out the full answer below:

Researchers described the experiments which demonstrate that horse flies have a difficult time landing on zebras while easily landing on colored horses.

In one experiment, the researchers put cloth coats bearing striped patterns on horses and observed that fewer flies landed on them than when the same horses who wore single-color coats.

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One of the researchers said: "We showed that horse flies approach zebras and uniformly colored horses at similar rates but that they fail to land on zebras - or striped horse coats - because they fail to decelerate properly so fly past them or literally bump into them and bounce off,"

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There had been four main hypotheses about the advantages zebras have due to their stripes: camouflage to avoid large predators; a social function like individual recognition; thermoregulation, with stripes setting up convection currents along the animal's back; and thwarting biting fly attacks.

African horse flies carry diseases such as trypanosomiasis and African horse sickness that cause wasting and can be fatal.

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Stripes did not deter flies from a distance, as they circled horses and zebras at similar rates. But the flies managed to land on zebras less than a quarter as often.

Another researcher explained: 'In addition to stripes that prevent controlled landings by horse flies, zebras are constantly swishing their tail and may run off if horse flies do land successfully, so they are also using behavioral means to prevent flies

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So now we know why Zebras have stripes, to deter flies from landing on it.