[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)