Have you ever wondered whether zebra stripes work? If they’re, you know, supposed to be camouflage. I’ve assumed they are. I assume most things are camouflage. I am very annoying at fashion shows.
I looked up the zebra stripe thing, and it turns out they might not be camouflage. They might be, in a weird way—one idea is that lions, who see in black and white, would be pretty tripped out by a zebra (especially if the lion’s done a lot of LSD and is, I don’t know, seeing its late father in the sky); another idea is that because zebras are often hunted while in herds, the stripes might make them blend together with each other (optical illusion, perhaps?) and therefore be harder to catch individually. But they also might not be.
BBC Future, which is evidently a thing, wrote about this (click on the article you’ll get to see a horse dressed as a zebra) in December of 2019. It was published on the 11th. I’m not sure what I was doing that day. It was a Wednesday. The theories are intriguing.
One is that flies don’t like to land on striped surfaces. I am going to try this the next time we try to eat food outside, since our yard is inexplicably packed with flies, and now that I say that I realize there has to be an old septic tank under our yard, doesn’t there. Loose dirt, chunks of pipe lying around, flies everywhere. Our dog is eating the poop of generations when she munches dirt, isn’t she. Shit.
Another is that the black hairs help the zebra warm up in the morning but then, when they create “mildly turbulent air” by being so hot next to the cooler, white stripes when the sun’s high (creating a temperature differential that makes the air move around), exist to help evaporate zebra sweat (Faster air means more evaporation, I guess? Is this why wind makes you less hot?), thereby helping the zebras cool off. This is the most impressive thing I have heard in, well, I don’t know how long, and I talked to a guy yesterday who lives in Spain.
There are others that are more boring, but if you’re into it (or if you just want to see the horse dressed as a zebra, which is worth it I promise) click the link up above and contribute to the prosperity of what I can only imagine are time-traveling reporters working for the BBC.
