Why Zebras Have Stripes. Maybe

Many theories exist to explain the striped coat of the zebra—that it helps the animals recognize one another, that it camouflages them in tall grass and confuses predators—but the results of a new study seem to suggest that it evolved for another reason entirely. It appears that the zebra's black-and-white stripes are unattractive to blood-sucking flies. Researchers found that horseflies were most attracted to dark-colored horses, whose coats reflect horizontally polarized light. White coats reflect unpolarized light that was found to be much less attractive to flies. Least attractive, however, was the zebra's coat, which reflects light in alternately polarized and unpolarized patterns. More...

---

A great many people will think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. ~ William James ~