If provided, your email will not be published or shared. Flies seem to struggle to recognize striped surfaces, but scientists have not quite figured out why this is, Caro told Live Science. Cloaked in stripes, the very same animals suddenly became more resistant to flies, except on their uncovered heads. This study was funded by the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Bristol and the Royal Society. Where there aren't, they don't. And several researchers, over the years, have shown that these flies find it hard to land on striped surfaces. Scientists have been puzzling over the role of zebra stripes for more than 150 years. “I wouldn’t want to suggest that horse-wear companies sell striped livery for their riders yet,” he said. For at least 150 years, scientists have pondered why zebras have stripes. “When we looked at the videos, we found that the flies simply aren’t decelerating when they come in to the stripes,” Caro said. Over the years, there have been many more rational explanations, but that all-important scientific consensus has remained elusive. Other animals have predators, and they don't have stripes,'" said study co-author Ren Larison, a researcher in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA. Could there be THREE Spider-Men in the next movie? Pottymouth Parrots, Instagram Records, and Marathon Tennis, Fake Turtle Eggs Help Track Down Poachers, Elections Around the World: New Zealand, Guinea, & Bolivia, News Roundup: Supreme Court, Kyrgyzstan President, & Pink Dolphins, For Real? They studied photos and video footage of zebras to test the theory, which suggested the markings make optical illusions so it's hard for predators to focus on individual animals. And uniformly colored coats had no effect; the stripes, specifically, befuddled the flies. The authors also stress the burden of blood sucking insects: both tsetse flies and horseflies are the vectors for significant and often-fatal diseases in horses; they are probably also capable of draining a significant amount of blood (several hundred millilitres in a day, apparently). Original article on Live Science. Fewer horse flies landed on the horses wearing the stripy coats. Have you ever wondered why a zebra has stripes? Zebras are famous for their strong pattern of black and white stripes. Scientists have mostly concentrated on the theory that zebras’ stripes keep them cool in the sun… These findings suggest that torso stripes may do more to help zebras regulate their body temperature than to avoid predators and tsetse flies, the team reported Tuesday (Jan. 13) in the journal Royal Society Open Science. Future US, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor, “We need to do the work first.”, More important, I ask him, Would a striped shirt protect me from biting flies? In a new paper published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Bristol scientists have now provided significant depth to this hypothesis by narrowing down the possible mechanism. “Now that we know striped coats work just as well as stripes on real zebras, we can really play around with them,” he said. “In twilight they are not at all conspicuous, the stripes of white and black so merging together into a grey tint it is difficult to see them at a little distance.”. Instead, mounting evidence suggests that it is parasitic flies that are confounded by the zebra’s distinctive patterning. Still, the researchers have not experimentally tested the theory that black and white stripes may generate small-scale breezes over a zebra's body, and some researchers don't think stripes can actually create this effect. To get rid of the insects, the animals can twitch (shake their skin suddenly) or flick with their tails. The idea that zebra stripes might make it hard to figure out where to attack something is not new. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website. The researchers now think the stripes dazzle the flies so they can't land properly. For one, they’re highly susceptible to a variety of fatal diseases, including trypanosomiasis, African horse sickness, and equine influenza, that are spread by horseflies and tsetse flies. Weird venomous caterpillars that look like walking toupées are invading Virginia, Warm pasta helps hot, angry neutron stars cool down, 10,000-year-old footprints show journey of squirmy toddler and caregiver, Physicists keep trying to break the rules of gravity but this supermassive black hole just said 'no'. All Rights Reserved. Photograph: Nigel Cattlin/Alamy. For Tim Caro, it was surprisingly easy to dress horses like zebras. Meet the animals rescued after getting stuck. You can use the setting below to control whether content tagged in this manner is shown. Zebras use their tails much more often than horses, so horseflies can never stay on them for long. A new study answers a question people have long asked themselves about the animal kingdom: Why do zebras have stripes? Researchers did an experiment in which they put zebra-patterned coats on to the horses. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Something’s clearly throwing them off, but the details are still a mystery. Over the last decade, Professor Tim Caro at the University of Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences has examined and discredited many popular theories such as their use as camouflage from predators, a cooling mechanism through the formation of convection currents and a role in social interactions. No one, however, had watched the insects trying to bite actual zebras. More recently, most scientists have begun to agree that the stripes help zebras avoid biting insects. Live Science is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. In The Descent of Man, he dismissed the idea they could act as camouflage, citing William Burchell’s observations of a herd: Their sleek ribs glistened in the sun, and the brightness and regularity of their striped coats presented a picture of extraordinary beauty, in which probably they are not surpassed by any other quadruped.