skunkbear:

For a long time, people thought zebras evolved stripes as a sort of communal camouflage. (A lion sees a big swath of stripes and gets a bad headache trying to isolate a target).

Then, a research group came out with a new theory: the stripes help repel bloodsucking flies.

And now, an even newer theory! The stripes are part of an air conditioning system. Researchers looked for a relationship between stripe patterns throughout Africa (turns out it varies a lot) and 26 environmental variables. What did they find?

We found no evidence that striping may have evolved to escape predators or avoid biting flies. Instead, we found that temperature successfully predicts a substantial amount of the stripe pattern variation observed in plains zebra.

Zebras in hotter regions have more defined stripes. Here’s the logic: dark stripes heat up faster, white stripes heat up slower —> that creates areas of different temperature —> that creates little convection currents (remember how wind happnes?) —> that helps the animals cool. 

An interesting idea - I’m looking forward to the responses from the camouflage and biting fly people.

Photo: Kow Loon

Figure: Brenda Larison, et al.