She favours the theory of thermoregulation, which posits that black stripes absorb heat to warm zebras in the morning chill and white stripes reflect light to cool zebras in the afternoon heat. Retired animal lab technician Alison Cobb told BBC Future that she didn’t think avoiding biting flies was important enough to spark an evolutionary feature like stripes. Though this is one of the most-tested theories on the stripe issue, not all scientists are convinced. At Hill Livery, too, fewer flies landed on zebras and horses with striped coats than on horses without striped coats. ![]() In a 2014 study by Caro and others, they found that striping on animals is more common in areas rife with biting flies, potentially meaning that biting flies struggle to see a striped or black-and-white surface as a safe place to land. Recent studies have focused on testing a few of the possible theories for zebras’ stripes, the most popular being protection from biting flies and thermoregulation. Caro was commenting on a team who, while studying a herd of zebras at Hill Livery in the United Kingdom, dressed horses in black-and-white striped outfits and let them loose among zebras and horses without fake stripes to hopefully gain insight on the purpose of stripes. “People have been talking about zebra stripes for over a hundred years, but it's just a matter of really doing experiments and thinking clearly about the issue to understand it better,” ecologist Tim Caro told BBC Future in 2019. In the history of the study of zebras, researchers have proposed at least 18 different theories on why zebras have stripes, with explanations ranging from camouflage to protection against predators to marks of uniqueness like a human fingerprint. Question answered! However: researchers still aren’t sure why zebras have stripes at all. A shaved zebra, without any stripes, could be almost unrecognizable as an all-black animal. Since white stripes only exist because pigment is denied, black is understood to be the “default” colour of a zebra.īeneath all that fur, zebras have black skin, too. ![]() What’s important about zebras is that their white fur represents an absence of melanin white is not its own pigment. In zebras, chemical messengers determine which melanocytes deliver pigment to which section of fur, thus creating the zebra’s black and white pattern. In both cases, melanocyte cells produce melanin-the pigment-that is outwardly visible. These cells are present in all animals, and they’re primarily responsible for generating the pigment that gives colour to skin and hair. But looks are deceiving in the zebra’s case.Īll of a zebra’s fur, both black and white, grows from follicles that contain melanocyte cells. Q: What’s black and white and red all over?īut this question is no joke, because it actually does have an answer: zebras are black with white stripes.Īt first glance, it may appear the opposite is true-after all, the black stripes of many zebras end on the belly and towards the inside of the legs, revealing the rest as white. The question of whether zebras are white with black stripes or black with white stripes might seem like the set-up for a classic joke like this one: SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.100 Women Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians. ![]() COVID-19 Portal While this global health crisis continues to evolve, it can be useful to look to past pandemics to better understand how to respond today.Student Portal Britannica is the ultimate student resource for key school subjects like history, government, literature, and more.This Time in History In these videos, find out what happened this month (or any month!) in history.#WTFact Videos In #WTFact Britannica shares some of the most bizarre facts we can find.Demystified Videos In Demystified, Britannica has all the answers to your burning questions.Britannica Classics Check out these retro videos from Encyclopedia Britannica’s archives.Britannica Explains In these videos, Britannica explains a variety of topics and answers frequently asked questions.
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