Are zebras white with black stripes yahoo

'It's one of those pieces of research that you say, 'why hasn't someone done this before?'' said Tim Woodfine, the director of conservation at Marwell Wildlife in southern England. 'This indicates that stripes may disrupt the flies' abilities to have a controlled landing.' Davis Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. 'Once they get close to the zebras, however, they tend to fly past or bump into them,' said Tim Caro, a professor in the U.C. The flies landed less frequently on the zebras and the horses covered in striped coats. But when the flies got closer, things get dicey. 'Stripes may dazzle flies in some way once they are close enough to see them with their low-resolution eyes.'ДЇrom a distance, the flies were equally attracted to both horses and zebras, with the same number of insects hovering around both types of animals. 'This reduced ability to land on the zebra's coat may be due to stripes disrupting the visual system of the horse flies during their final moments of approach,' said Martin How, a research fellow at the University of Bristol. Journal reference: PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/ researchers found that fewer horseflies landed on the cloaked horses than on the ones without striped coats, suggesting that zebra stripes may offer protection from blood-sucking insects that can spread disease. That instinct doesnвЂ™t mean we are wrong to seek such things вЂ“ sometimes just-so stories turn out to be correct вЂ“ but this is one area where our biases can work against us. There is something psychologically appealing about a single, clear explanation. It may be that zebra stripes have a similarly complex history. Evolution is good at re-purposing things, so a body part may arise, be used for one purpose, and then end up being used for something entirely different.ДЄn obvious example is the lens of the mammalian eye, which probably arose simply as a protective cover for the retina and only later developed the ability to focus light, creating a sharper image вЂ“ which is now its most вЂњobviousвЂќ function. Perhaps the most important point is that these studies can only tell us is why zebra stripes continue to exist today, not why they arose in the first place. Read more: We may have the evolution of beauty completely wrong Think about the experience of watching a herd of zebras all dashing in different directions, and imagine trying to pick out one of them to bring down. But the stripes could create вЂњ dazzle camouflageвЂќ: overwhelming the predatorвЂ™s visual system and making it hard to track the zebraвЂ™s movement. One which at first seems ridiculous is that the stripes are a form of camouflage. But other ideas seem to have more to them. Some ideas donвЂ™t seem to stand up, notably the suggestion that the stripes help zebras cool down on hot days вЂ“ if that were true, we would expect a lot more tropical animals to be stripy. The hypothesis backed by a lot of evidence, but does that mean itвЂ™s the only reason for a zebraвЂ™s stripes? Not necessarily. The implication is that the stripes were having a real effect. Putting striped coats on the horsesвЂ™ bodies meant the horseflies landed there less often вЂ“ but still landed on their heads, which were uncovered. Horseflies circled round both, but they landed on horses significantly more often. A team led by Tim Caro of the University of California, Davis tracked captive zebras and horses at a site in England.

Are zebras white with black stripes yahoo