#Zebra stripes skin#

#Zebra stripes skin#

Movement of sweat away from the skin is accelerated by the recently discovered surfactant equid protein latherin, a vital component of cooling in racehorses. Like all equids, zebras sweat to keep cool. The hide temperatures reach 16oC higher than the living zebras. There is a 12–15oC difference between living zebras’ stripe temperatures throughout the middle seven daytime hours. The temperatures of black and white stripes on two zebras and a zebra hide were measured, throughout separate sunny days in Kenya. A solution to the riddle of zebra stripes, discussed by Wallace and Darwin, is at hand. Susceptibility to ectoparasite attack is discussed in relation to short coat hair, disease transmission and blood loss. Conversely, there is no consistent support for camouflage, predator avoidance, heat management or social interaction hypotheses. For subspecies, there are significant associations between our proxy for tabanid biting fly annoyance and most striping measures (facial and neck stripe number, flank and rump striping, leg stripe intensity and shadow striping), and between belly stripe number and tsetse fly distribution, several of which are replicated at the species level. Here we match variation in striping of equid species and subspecies to geographic range overlap of environmental variables in multifactor models controlling for phylogeny to simultaneously test the five major explanations for this infamous colouration.

Despite over a century of interest, the function of zebra stripes has never been examined systematically.