The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Most animal skin cells produce melanin, which gives human skin, eyes, and hair their color. Underneath the zebra’s striped coat is actually black skin. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. A popular question about zebras is whether they are white with black stripes or black with white stripes. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. HOW: Our new findings suggest that zebras could equally be checkered.ĬHANG: Which makes it all the more impressive that zebras earn their stripes.Ĭopyright © 2020 NPR. MCALISTER: It's thrown out more questions than it has resolved any ancient riddle.ĬHANG: But the work does have one huge implication. The work appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.įADEL: McAlister says the study makes clear just how little we know about fly perception. HOW: One of which is that these stripes generate an optical illusion in the eyes of the flies.ĬHANG: You see, he says stripes might create an illusion that, to a fly's eyes, looks something like a rotating barbershop pole, and that confuses them.įADEL: Now in a new study, they tested that idea by dressing horses in striped coats or checkered coats, which wouldn't generate that illusion.ĬHANG: And it turns out checkered patterns repel flies, too, putting to rest the barber pole idea. So these are mothers hell-bent on getting a proper start in life for all these eggs you see.įADEL: Which raises another question - how do stripes keep these hell-bent mothers away?ĬHANG: Well, Martin How has a few hypotheses for that. It's for the development of their offspring. Erica McAlister, curator of flies at the Natural History Museum in London, says female flies can be quite tenacious.ĮRICA MCALISTER: Most of the times, the bloodmeal is not for them. HOW: We then decided to essentially dress horses up as zebras and then look at the different effects that these had on the amount of biting flies coming to land.ĬHANG: The conclusion, which they published last year - horses decked out in striped coats kept flies away, too, suggesting that the stripes themselves deter flies, not just a zebra's stench, for example.įADEL: And repelling biting flies is no easy feat. They saw that lots of flies were bothering the horses but leaving the zebras alone. HOW: Maybe they're striving to generate convection currents on the skins and make them sort of cool down in that - in the hot weather.įADEL: But How's team had a different idea after observing horses and captive zebras on a farm in the U.K. MARTIN HOW: Doesn't really make sense, though. Martin How of the University of Bristol says there have been quite a few theories - camouflage, for one. And now a question that has puzzled biologists since the days of Darwin - why do zebras have stripes?
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