ELI5…. Zebras do not seem to blend in to their surroundings.
Why did they not evolve as a breed to be camouflaged?
How did these seemingly brightly colored animals survive predators?
In: Biology
It seems like they’re still researching it, but one the strongest reasons might be to keep off biting flies.
Zebras naturally roam in an area where lots of flies like to bite them and, when they bite them, they can transfer diseases. Scientists have found that stripes tend to confuse the flies and make it harder for them to land on the animals to suck their blood.
Thus, zebras that are more stripey or have more obvious stripes will be less likely to get landed on by disease carrying flies.
These zebras with less diseases and will live longer and be less likely to be picked off by predators. Zebras run in groups called herds, so the predators pick off the ones that are slower or weaker.
If they live longer, then they are more likely to survive to reproduce and pass on their more-stripey genes.
Thus, the next generation of zebras becomes more and more stripey.
As for how the stripes came to be in the first place… every time your cells copy each other, there is always a chance for an error in the copying process. One of those errors made an animal with stripes. It gave that animal enough of an advantage over the non-striped ones that it was able to survive and reproduce, making more and more striped ones with that same advantage. The stripes become more and more obvious until we have what we have today.
Source: [https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191031-the-truth-behind-why-zebras-have-stripes](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191031-the-truth-behind-why-zebras-have-stripes)
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