Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house Stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart happens him Marshall Brain with today's question, how
Speaker 1: do a zebra stripes act as camouflage to humans? A
Speaker 1: zebras stripes stick out like a sore thumb, so it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine that the stripes act as any kind
Speaker 1: of camouflage. Zoologists believe the stripes offer zebras protection from
Speaker 1: predators in a couple of different ways. The first is
Speaker 1: as simple pattern camouflage, much like the military uses in
Speaker 1: its fatigue designs. The wavy lines of a zebra blend
Speaker 1: in with the wavy lines of the tall grass around it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter that the zebra stripes are black and
Speaker 1: white and the lines of grass or yellow, brown, or green,
Speaker 1: because the zebra's main predator, the lion, is color blind.
Speaker 1: The pattern of the camouflage is much more important than
Speaker 1: its color when hiding from these predators. If a zebra
Speaker 1: is standing still in matching surroundings, a lion may overlook
Speaker 1: it completely. This benefit may help an individual zebra in
Speaker 1: some situations, but the more significant means of protection has
Speaker 1: to do with zebra herds. Zebras usually travel in large groups,
Speaker 1: in which they stay very close to each other. Even
Speaker 1: with their camouflage pattern, It's highly unlikely that a large
Speaker 1: gathering of zebras would be able to escape the notice
Speaker 1: of a lion, but their stripes help them use this
Speaker 1: large size to their advantage. When all the zebras keep
Speaker 1: together as a big group, the pattern of each zebra
Speaker 1: stripes blends in with the stripes of all the zebras
Speaker 1: around it. This is confusing to the lion, who sees
Speaker 1: a large, moving striped mass instead of individual zebras. The
Speaker 1: lion has trouble picking out any one zebra ra, and
Speaker 1: so it doesn't have a very good plan of attack.
Speaker 1: It's hard for the lion to even recognize which way
Speaker 1: each zebra is moving. Imagine the difference in pursuing one
Speaker 1: animal and charging into an amorphous blob of animals moving
Speaker 1: every which way. The lions inability to distinguish zebras also
Speaker 1: makes it more difficult for it to target and track
Speaker 1: weaker zebras in the herd. So do zebra stripes confuse
Speaker 1: zebras as much as they confuse lions. Oddly enough, while
Speaker 1: making zebras indistinguishable to other animals, zebra stripes actually help
Speaker 1: zebras recognize each other. Stripe patterns are like zebra fingerprints.
Speaker 1: Every zebra has a slightly different arrangement. Zoologists believe this
Speaker 1: is how zebras distinguish who's who in a zebra herd.
Speaker 1: This certainly has significant benefits. A zebra mare and her
Speaker 1: full can keep track of each other in a large herd,
Speaker 1: for example, and a zebra can very quickly distinguish its
Speaker 1: own herd from another. This also helps human researchers because
Speaker 1: it enables them to track particular zebras in the wild.
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