
Cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid biting fly attack - colinprince
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223447
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gregschlom
The fact that zebra's stripes evolved to avoid getting bit by flies (and
specifically, the tsetse fly, which transmits a deadly) has been known since
at least the 80s. I wonder why these researchers are doing these experiments
now.

In certain parts of Africa zebras have lost most of their stripes, and the map
of stripeless zebra is strongly correlated with the map of where the tsetse
fly are less active.

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dilippkumar
Academic Literature:

> Six Japanese Black cows were assigned to treatments using a 3 × 3 Latin-
> square design. The treatments were black-and-white painted stripes, black
> painted stripes, and no stripes (all-black body surface). Recorded fly-
> repelling behaviors were head throw, ear beat, leg stamp, skin twitch, and
> tail flick. Photo images of the right side of each cow were taken using a
> commercial digital camera after every observation and biting flies on the
> body and each leg were counted from the photo images. Here we show that the
> numbers of biting flies on Japanese Black cows painted with black-and-white
> stripes were significantly lower than those on non-painted cows and cows
> painted only with black stripes. The frequencies of fly-repelling behaviors
> in cows painted with black-and-white stripes were also lower than those in
> the non-painted and black-striped cows.

2020 netspeak:

    
    
        Biting Fly: Bzzzzzz
        Cow: *Disguises as zebra*
        Biting Fly:
        Biting Fly:
        Biting Fly: Bzzzzzz *flies away*

