the flies

Did they study the paint chemicals themselves to see if that by itself was a natural bug repellant?

Did they check if the paint chemicals are even safe for cows?

🤔

Tha smartest mother fucker in the room

Looks like this is the study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6776349/

In the cited study with buckets, it was shown that striped and spotted surfaces attract fewer flies.

That makes me think if Nguni cattle have an easier time with those pests.

If yes, that would be another plus for hardy landraces in place of overengineered, capitalmaxxed breeds.

So, I was able to convince a coworker that I had a friend who worked at our nearby zoo, and that my friend let me in on the secret that zebras aren't real, they're just horses painted to look like that, "big zoo is lying to us to get our money," you know.

Well, long story short I'm gonna need to steal this image from you and crop it, thanks.

I'm going on holiday to Cambodia in February. Guess I'll bring my body paint supplies and run around in war stripes over my body.

Good for their physical health, but not great for their personal goals and expectations.

That one zoo that painted a donkey and tried to pass it off as a zebra were just way ahead of their time

Why has evolution let these cows down?

I'm about to start dressing like beetlejuice

Reminds me of a donkey I saw in Mexico painted like a zebra trying to trick tourists

Source? I'm curious to read about this. How do they know the paint didn't do it? Another comment here said that spots also do the trick, so if you have two cows in the same field, one spotted and one solid colored, is the solid colored cow getting 2x as many flies? Do the stripes still work when surrounded by other cows who don't have stripes? So many questions!

If they figure out if it's the white stripes or black stripes that do the trick they could reach 100%.

I first read function as in mathemetical function, now I wonder, what the avarege zebras stripes function is

Some horse fly blankets and hoods have a zebra pattern, probably for the same reason.

Moobra

Why are the top comments in a science community so proudly anti-intellectual?

That's where Hershey's Cookies and Cream chocolate bars are from!

So if flies are attracted to dead things, and black and white stripes deter flies, then I believe we've just explained Beetlejuice's appearance!

What if the flies just hated the smell of the paint lol

If you say Beeflejuice three times....

Cute dog

Time to dust off my old timey prison outfit

Interesting. A while ago, I read that zebra stripes were meant to confuse predators. Basically, the idea was that when they ran as a herd, their stripes made it difficult to tell where one zebra ended and the other began. I wonder if that's considered bunk now or if this is supposed to be an additional benefit.

Permanently Deleted

moo

Awesome. Now narrow down the mechanism with further research.

Can someone forward this to Trump's team

Sure, that it wasn't the smell of the paint, that drove the insects away?

See, some people think forcible sterilization is never acceptable, and yet we have multiple comments from people that didn't read the study asking if the authors thought of something.

Maybe you'd know if you were literate.

You can have your balls back if you do your homework.

Yay, more animal abuse.