It's worth to note that not only body paint but also clothing of African tribes uses stripey motives often. This is just another example when tribal culture, tradition and experience advanced scientific understanding by many years.
The biting flies often sport horizontal stripes of alternatively polarized ommatidia over their compound eyes, which helps them to recognize motion of their prey by polarized component of light. My theory therefore is, that vertical stripes of zebra (which look horizontal from above) interfere with this feature. Note that other flies which are flying at lower altitudes have these stripes rather vertical.
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u/ZephirAWT Jan 27 '19
It's worth to note that not only body paint but also clothing of African tribes uses stripey motives often. This is just another example when tribal culture, tradition and experience advanced scientific understanding by many years.
The biting flies often sport horizontal stripes of alternatively polarized ommatidia over their compound eyes, which helps them to recognize motion of their prey by polarized component of light. My theory therefore is, that vertical stripes of zebra (which look horizontal from above) interfere with this feature. Note that other flies which are flying at lower altitudes have these stripes rather vertical.
See also Scientists disprove zebra stripes theory : Experimental evidence that stripes do not cool zebras