“The Surprising Reason Zebras Have Stripes,” Ed Yong’s essay in The Atlantic, celebrates the most recently published research about how some large mammals manage to protect themselves against flies. Tim Caro and colleagues experimented with striped blankets, publishing their story in the research journal PLoS ONE. Ig Nobel Prize winners Gábor Horváth, Susanne Äkesson, and […]
Tag: stripes
Stripes painted on the body protect against blood-sucking insects
The Swedish and Hungarian researchers who won an Ig Nobel Prize (in 2016) for discovering why white-haired horses are the most horsefly-proof horses, and for discovering why dragonflies are fatally attracted to black tombstones have published a new study, extending their work—to use painted stripes to protect human life. A report in Forskning, in Swedish, explains […]
Experimental Evidence That Stripes Do Not Cool Zebras, by Ig Nobel Winners
The prize-winning researchers who discovered why white-haired horses are the most horsefly-proof horses has now probed a classic mystery about zebra stripes. They published this report: “Experimental Evidence That Stripes Do Not Cool Zebras,” Gábor Horváth, Ádám Pereszlényi, Dénes Száz, András Barta, Imre M. Jánosi, Balázs Gerics, and Susanne Åkesson, Scentific Reports, vol. 8, no. 9351, 2018. […]
Effect of zebra stripes on horseflies
In a relative sense, zebra stripes repel horseflies. That’s the latest discovery reported by Gábor Horváth [pictured here], who discovered that white horses attract fewer flies, and that Vikings knew a thing or two about how to use light for ship navigation. For details, see the study: “Polarotactic tabanids find striped patterns with brightness and/or polarization modulation least […]