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zebras

Stripes confuse people but they do not cool zebras

From ScienceDaily: Susanne Åkesson, a biologist at Lund University in Sweden, refutes the theory that zebras have striped fur to stay cool in the hot sun. That hypothesis is wrong, she and her colleagues show in a study recently published in Scientific Reports. There has been an ongoing discussion among researchers, dating back to Darwin, on why zebras have their signature black and white stripes. One of several theories is that it keeps them cool in the sunshine. The black stripes get warmer than the white areas, and the theory states that this creates small vortexes when the hotter air above the dark fur meets the cooler air above the white fur. According to the theory these vortexes works as Read More ›