Why Zebras Have Black and White Stripes

Europeans who colonized Africa had trouble sending their horses to sub-Saharan countries, because they would be bitten by flies and died of the diseases those flies carried. The obvious answer was to domesticate zebras to ride and carry cargo instead. Not a good idea. While zebras had some immunity from the diseases that killed horses, they did not want to be domesticated. Zebras aren't just striped horses; they are wild animals that are distantly related to horses. And the reason they could survive among all those disease-carrying flies were the distinctive stripes they developed. Nature knew that fly bites were more dangerous to these creatures than the lions that ate them, so zebras invented their own kind of dazzle camouflage. This TED-Ed lesson from Cella Wright covers the research done to find out why zebras abandoned the kind of brown camouflage most animals use for flamboyant stripes. -via Laughing Squid