Zebras and horses

There's an old saying: a tiger cannot change his stripes. However, a horse? That might be a different story. Years ago, when I was a researcherAt the university of Washington, I read an article entitled what the frogs eye tells The frogs brain. Basically, the article suggests that a frogs eye is a specified motion detector. For example, When A fly starts buzzing around in front of the frog, it triggers the frogs tongue to automatically come outAnd catch the fly. When a large object like a hand is waved near the frogs eye, It triggers an automatic response for the frog to jump. OK. Simple brains, simple but specific wiring. I just heard of a research project taking place in England where horses, when covered with a cloak that perfectly resembles a zebra, will not be attacked by horseflies. This is because the horseflies eyes get confused by the stripes. Researchers examined the behavior of horse flies near captive zebras and uniformly colored horses and found that, although rates on the amount of time the flies spent circling the two different species did not differ -- fewer flies landed on zebras than horses. Taken together, these findings indicate that, up close, striped surfaces prevented flies from making a controlled landing but did not influence fly behaviour at a distance," according to the study. To be continued, but you might wanna think about that when you set your horses out to pasture this summer.