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God or Not: Why Zebras have Stripes

calamity

calamity

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Flies
Zebras are obviously the chillest animals on Earth, but how did they get that way? As it turns out, their signature stripes may not have evolved as camouflage, but instead are largely a deterrent to blood-sucking flies...

Two things stood out: The three species with stripes are the only ones located in the same spot as blood-sucking, disease-carrying tsetse flies, and their width of their stripes match previous models showing the optimal stripe size for deterring flies. And to be clear, biting flies can be a huge problem: studies have shown that cattle in the US can lose 200-500cc of blood per day if biting flies aren’t controlled with pesticides, and they can also be serious disease vectors.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-reason-zebras-have-stripes-isnt-what-you-think
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Well this is random.
 
For most of my life I thought the stripes were there to confuse lions and cheetahs. If it turns out, as it seems, that the stripes evolved because they deter flies from landing, I would consider that pretty amazing.
 
calamity said:
For most of my life I thought the stripes were there to confuse lions and cheetahs. If it turns out, as it seems, that the stripes evolved because they deter flies from landing, I would consider that pretty amazing.
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It can be both. Traits can be selected for multiple reasons.
 
God was picking teams. They got stripes, the other side got solids.
 
ecofarm said:
It can be both. Traits can be selected for multiple reasons.
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good point...but I think the article states that they are finding that predator theory no longer holds up.

After testing for each factor, Caro's team found that "there is no consistent support for camouflage, predator avoidance, heat management or social interaction hypotheses." As they note, many factors are interrelated. Hyenas are located in both the hot tropics and subtropics, combining temperature and predation variables; meanwhile, tabanid flies sometimes rest in trees, combining parasite and background blending.
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calamity said:
For most of my life I thought the stripes were there to confuse lions and cheetahs. If it turns out, as it seems, that the stripes evolved because they deter flies from landing, I would consider that pretty amazing.
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They do that too. Hard to pick an individual from a galloping herd full of stripes.
 
calamity said:
Flies
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It's like a giant contest between angels. One group of angels designed the zebra, the other the flies. The angels who created the flies thought they had the upper hand, but the group in charge of zebras figured out that the flies were confused by stripes, so they created striped zebras.

It's a bit like a killer robot contest, just on a larger scale. Whichever team creates an organism that survives for a long time wins the contest.
 
Dittohead not! said:
It's like a giant contest between angels. One group of angels designed the zebra, the other the flies. The angels who created the flies thought they had the upper hand, but the group in charge of zebras figured out that the flies were confused by stripes, so they created striped zebras.

It's a bit like a killer robot contest, just on a larger scale. Whichever team creates an organism that survives for a long time wins the contest.
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California Angels vs NJ Devils? Puts a whole new spin on that whole East Coast-West Coast thing.
 
calamity said:
California Angels vs NJ Devils? Puts a whole new spin on that whole East Coast-West Coast thing.
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Something like that. Maybe more like Buddhist vs Christians vying for their recognition in Heaven.
 
The reason there is a devil along with a God; God made the zebra while the devil responded with a striped creature of his own, called a tiger and they devour zebras.
 
rhinefire said:
The reason there is a devil along with a God; God made the zebra while the devil responded with a striped creature of his own, called a tiger and they devour zebras.
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Except that tigers live in India, while zebras live in Africa, and without predators the herbivores would overpopulate and overrun their habitat.
 
This has to do with philosophy... how? Seems like this would make for a cool science thread about trait selection (a lot of our evolution is about avoiding smaller problems, like diseases and pests, rather than large predators), but other than the title's vague reference to argument from design, what's the point here?
 
The most accepted theory is that the stripes offer camouflage at a distance. In a large group the irregular combinations of light and dark blend into the grasses. Solid colors which are either dark or light will stand out.
 
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