There have been many theories to explain the zebra's unmistakable
stripes. Scientists have suggested that each zebra has a unique pattern
that lets other animals recognise it. Or that the mass of black and
white in a vast herd provides confusing camouflage that puts off predators.
But this team set out to test exactly what effect the stripes had on a zebra's most irritating and ubiquitoushorsefly. enemy - the blood-sucking
As part of their experiment the team put sticky horse models - one white, one black and one zebra-striped - into a fly-infested
field. When they collected the flies that had landed and stuck to each
of the models, they found that the model zebra attracted by far the
fewest flies.
The researchers think that zebras had a black-coated ancestor, which evolved its white stripes in an evolutionary arms race, with an insect that's become the biting, disease-carrying scourge of most horse herds.
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