Fun Fact October 8, 2020.
8 October 2020
I spent summers during my teenage years working on my grandmothers dairy farm. Where ever you have cows you have flies, a lot of them. Cows have to deal with these pesky creatures that are beyond annoying. Farmers can now protect their animals by painting their cows with zebra-like stripes. According to a 2019 study published in PLOS One, 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. IFL Science suggests this might work because the stripes may cause a kind of camouflage, confusing them. I don’t know about you, but if I saw a cow painted like a zebra, I’d be confused and would probably do at least a double take.
