So, I was able to convince a coworker that I had a friend who worked at our nearby zoo, and that my friend let me in on the secret that zebras aren’t real, they’re just horses painted to look like that, “big zoo is lying to us to get our money,” you know.
Well, long story short I’m gonna need to steal this image from you and crop it, thanks.
If they figure out if it’s the white stripes or black stripes that do the trick they could reach 100%.
Source? I’m curious to read about this. How do they know the paint didn’t do it? Another comment here said that spots also do the trick, so if you have two cows in the same field, one spotted and one solid colored, is the solid colored cow getting 2x as many flies? Do the stripes still work when surrounded by other cows who don’t have stripes? So many questions!
This is why we need the paper linked with the meme. It seems obvious that a fly would prefer skin to paint.
I like to see what you guys can find when you dig around. ;)
How do they know the paint didn’t do it?
There were 3 groups of black cows: an unpainted control group, a black stripe group painted with black stripes (not very visible because the cows were already black), and a black and white painted group. The control group had similar results to the black stripe group, which suggests that the black paint alone didn’t do anything.
So further research could be to compare to an all black painted group and an all white painted group, with no unpainted fur, as well. If it’s the pattern, then one would expect the totally painted cattle of either paint color would see similar results as unpainted.
Brilliant, thanks!
Good for their physical health, but not great for their personal goals and expectations.
I’m pretty sure this study shows that paint repels mosquitos. Not much else.
Yup. Large creatures knows better than to wear stripes.
Oh, I was thinking more along the lines of any aspirations to not be a cow.
My Chemilkal Romance
One painted cow to the other: See bra!
Dig the username.
Why has evolution let these cows down?
I mean, we kind of hijacked evolution in favor of hypergrowth and ludicrous gazongas a long time ago.
Hippity, hoppity. Your natural selection is now my property!
In most places horse are more nuisances than actual threats to large mammals. But then, there are the tsé-tsé flies…
tse-tse horses would be terrifying.
Did they study the paint chemicals themselves to see if that by itself was a natural bug repellant?
Did they check if the paint chemicals are even safe for cows?
🤔
I’ve not seen the study referenced, but if I were doing it I’d have cows I painted with white paint, white stripes, black paint, and a control I left unpainted.
Yes, obviously. But are the flies possibly repelled by the paint? Are the flies even able to bite through the paint?
Edit: 50% stripes, 50% reduction in bug bites.
Coincidence? I think not.
Somebody posted the study in this thread if you’re curious
Fair enough. But I’m in no rush to paint myself or my dog, and I lost the last cow I ever had over the Rainbow Bridge…
Yes. They had a control group with only black stripes along with an unpainted group. I would have to assume they also checked the paints for potential repellents, but I only skimmed the article.
Instead of unpainted black they should have done painted black, or done both.
There is also the paint creating a barrier.
OK, but they didn’t count bites. They counted how many flies landed on the cow. So it being a barrier is irrelevant
A control group where they mix the colors together and paint them grey would answer that
Can a biting fly even penetrate paint, to consume that precious bovine blood?
What if you actually read the study before asking questions 😅😜🤔
I haven’t read the study, but most of these would need a placebo group, so divide the herd into thirds, one with no paint, one with stripes, and one fully painted white to get a baseline for each group. Also would be good to randomize which group each cow goes in each day so to rule out one cow who is especially tasty to flies.
Also blindfold the scientists and the cows so it’s double blind. We don’t want the cows acting in a fly-attracting way because of placebo.
Those groups also have another characteristic that changes: the amount of the cow covered in paint.
How do you determine if its that vs the stripes or colors?
You paint a second control group the colors and patterns they already are
Did this study do that? The abstract didnt mention it.
Probably not. I was just answering your question - that’s how you’d eliminate that variable from the experiment
What if it’s just the white stripes (not the band)? Do white cows have the same number of flies? What if you paint them with black stripes?
Maybe those are answered in the article, but I’ll never read it.
LOL, same. Not worth the reading time. Any which way you twist it, there’s still probably way too many unknown factors.
That’s where Hershey’s Cookies and Cream chocolate bars are from!
Wait wait wait, I’m calling bullshit. I see no udders, nor any horns. That’s obviously two people wearing a striped cow costume for Halloween, duh.
I’m going on holiday to Cambodia in February. Guess I’ll bring my body paint supplies and run around in war stripes over my body.
Can confirm, insects are drawn to brightness
Luckily my soul is dark and bitter.
now that the song is playing forcefully in my brain i’m going to make you suffer with me
Don’t forget to pack a wife.
Awesome. Now narrow down the mechanism with further research.
I first read function as in mathemetical function, now I wonder, what the avarege zebras stripes function is
Pedantic warning: it’s not a conventional function, cuz it’d be multivalued for any given input no matter where you put the axes lol
Tha smartest mother fucker in the room
What is the burger tie for? To repel hippies?
No it’s to wipe the sauce off his chin after finishing a burger!
What that second burger tie for O.o
That’s for modesty!
What is America known for? Burgers and prisons
Little kids think haha funny burgler, adults shudder and cry
adults shudder and cry
Swiper, no swiping!
No, that’s just to look cool
Some horse fly blankets and hoods have a zebra pattern, probably for the same reason.
I’m about to start dressing like beetlejuice
See, some people think forcible sterilization is never acceptable, and yet we have multiple comments from people that didn’t read the study asking if the authors thought of something.
Maybe you’d know if you were literate.
You can have your balls back if you do your homework.
Alright, so for the idiots here, how is this not a study showing that paint repels mosquitos?
The treatments were black-and-white painted stripes, black painted stripes, and no stripes (all-black body surface). Recorded fly-repelling behaviors were head throw, ear beat, leg stamp, skin twitch, and tail flick. Photo images of the right side of each cow were taken using a commercial digital camera after every observation and biting flies on the body and each leg were counted from the photo images. Here we show that the numbers of biting flies on Japanese Black cows painted with black-and-white stripes were significantly lower than those on non-painted cows and cows painted only with black stripes
Black paint was not as effective as black and white paint.
Being illiterate has no correlation with wanting other people to do all the work for me. We’re just lazy. Please do some homework before jumping to conclusions.
still sounds like reproduction being a privilege is a good idea
That scene in Idiocracy where the smart couple fail to reproduce comes to mind.
This thread is like a Reddit/Lemmy Smart Guy combo. People who just assume paid researchers didn’t consider this extremely basic thing they learned about in high school, and also hinting at IQ-based eugenics
