[HN Gopher] Zebras of all stripes repel biting flies at close range ___________________________________________________________________ Zebras of all stripes repel biting flies at close range Author : jarenmf Score : 80 points Date : 2022-11-05 16:26 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.nature.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com) | [deleted] | WalterBright wrote: | I wonder why outdoor apparel makers don't make zebra striped | clothing. | jabl wrote: | Good point. Maybe there's competition from alternative | patternings. Like camouflage type patterns for hunters / | preppers / military cosplayers. Or high-viz colors for people | who worry about safety wrt. various kinds of accidents. Or just | whatever the current per se meaningless trend colors are? | SoftTalker wrote: | Seems like I remember it being a short-lived trend in the | 1980s? | WalterBright wrote: | The idea isn't trendiness, it's to reduce the mosquito bites. | atdrummond wrote: | Zubaz? | bilsbie wrote: | My idea (consider this public domain / prior art if no one has | though of it) | | We introduce tree frogs or perhaps geckos or chameleons to live | on cows. They would eat the flies and the body heat could | probably keep them warm year round. | | They'd eventually breed themselves to adapt to the life cycle and | be self perpetuating. | osrec wrote: | Okay, but how would they live "on" cows? Just ride on a cow's | back? It may be more bothersome to the cow than a few flies! | protomyth wrote: | _Our findings confirm that zebra stripes repel biting flies under | naturalistic conditions and do so at close range_ | | Which has lead to suggestions to breed this into livestock. Which | will certainly change the landscape in US. | | As I said before: _Somehow driving through South Dakota looking | out over a vast field of seaweed eating, zebra striped cows was | not the future I anticipated as a youth._ | libertine wrote: | I have a question, due to the lack of diversity of food sources | for flies, wouldn't that pressure de evolution of flies that | ignore the stripes? | | Maybe there would be a decline in population first, then a rise | of stripe seeing flies. | metadat wrote: | The flies might still hang around for a slice of pie. | justinpowers wrote: | Striped pie anyone? | BurningFrog wrote: | Or a new rural profession of Cow Painter springs up! | therusskiy wrote: | Zebra stripes are basically an adversarial pattern for Neural Net | in a fly's brain. | sandworm101 wrote: | Evolution is two-sided race. Insects breed/evolve much faster | than large mammals. One must wonder why they haven't evolved | the brainpower to overcome this trickery. The difficulty of | feeding on zebra must not be enough of an evolutionary pressure | ... until all the other animals start evolving stripes too. | metadat wrote: | That is a good question. Given the short lifespan of the | creatures, one hypothesis is their evolution is stuck in a | high-walled local maxima. | amelius wrote: | And at night? | gcanyon wrote: | "the source of the effect remains unexplained" They list several | candidate explanations, but miss one I came up with immediately: | maybe zebras are in some other way less attractive targets for | the flies -- their skin is thicker, their blood/fluids don't | taste as good, etc. -- and the stripes are simply a visual | indicator to the flies that they are zebras, and therefore less | desirable. This sort of trait has evolved poison frogs, insects, | and other plants and animals, so why not zebras? | Gys wrote: | Seems easy to test? Just paint a horse or cow and keep count of | the flies. | idlewords wrote: | This is mentioned in the paper, and you can find citations | there to previous experiments where the visual effect alone is | tested and demonstrated to be very strong. Whatever other | defenses a zebra has, it's been shown that flies really hate | those stripes. | gernb wrote: | maybe zebra skin has a different oder. They said they used | pelts. | aaron695 wrote: | lttlrck wrote: | I need zebra patterned socks. | bmitc wrote: | I recently learned this from BBC's _Life in Colour_ documentary. | It explained it, similar to the article (although the paper | really dances around this hypothesis), that the flies had a hard | time landing due to some visual weirdness from the stripes when | the flies are close up. They had a lot of close-up footage of | flies hovering above a zebra 's skin but seemingly confused on | how to land. | aeternum wrote: | Our eyes can also be confused by relatively simple patterns: | http://brainden.com/images/ricewave-big.gif | | Intuitively, it does seem like stripes would make it more | difficult to achieve focus for a compound eye, similar to how | when looking through a chain-link fence or window screen it's | easy to focus the wrong plane due to the spaced repetition. | BolexNOLA wrote: | I'll never forgive Animal Collective for using this as an | album cover! | bmitc wrote: | Vision is weird. It's things like this that, in my opinion, | showcase the idea that our perception of reality is sculpted | by our physiobiology. | SoftTalker wrote: | I wonder why, over the long term, the flies did not adapt to | this. | miohtama wrote: | Maybe compound eyes have some inherit flaw that makes it | harder to process visual signal of stripes. | gcanyon wrote: | Or the short term -- flies have much shorter generations. | That doesn't guarantee faster evolution, but it helps. | jabl wrote: | Maybe the adaptation would require significantly more | advanced visual processing with attendant increase in | weight, size, and energy consumption, making it not worth | it? | manmal wrote: | I thought this has been common knowledge for decades. | Sharlin wrote: | Literally the FIRST two sentences in the abstract: | | "The best-supported hypothesis for why zebras have stripes is | that stripes repel biting flies. While this effect is well- | established, the mechanism behind it remains elusive." | [deleted] | lifeisstillgood wrote: | That's fantastic. I so needed something that hit "I never knew | that" and "not remotely connected to tech and jobs and | mortgages". | | Well done World for funding simple scientific questions - not | trying to fix the planet, just asking "why does _that_ happen ". | | Marvellous | | One (morbid) thought - I wonder if lions get bitten less when | heads down in a black and white carcass? | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-05 23:00 UTC)