Zebra is an amazing animal right. With its black and white stripes, it always amazes us, but there has been a heated debate about why they have black and white stripes among researchers. It is believed that the cause of these strips on a zebra is associated with weather conditions. To explain further, zebras tend to have white and black strip because the heat on dark strip due to sunshine and cold in white strip, as white absorb less heat than dark, acts as a fan when they both meet, meaning it forms vortexes; consequently making zebra cooler in warmer climates.
However for few researchers from Lund University, this does not seem convincing, hence, they opted for a new experiment in order to understand if the theory is correct. So, these people filled big metal barrels with a sufficient amount of water and kept it in the hot sun with coverings of different coloured skin imitations to measure the temperature. They observed the strips does not cool down, meaning the story behind white and dark fur is not to cool the body of a zebra in a hot sun.
To answer this ever confusing question, Susanne Åkesson and her colleagues, who are from Hungary and Spain, propounded another theory. For which they are awarded the Ig Nobel Prize.
They claim that bright fur works as an optical protection against blood-sucking horseflies and other insects that bite. Horseflies are attracted by polarised light, the sort of light that appears when sunbeams are reflected on a dark surface. If the sunbeams are reflected on a white surface there will be no polarised light -- hence the protection.
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There have been many interesting theories for decades. Every one is unique and the researchers have their own perceptions. We must support their hard work as it is certainly not so easy and required a ton of dedication.
