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
The current leading theory is that the stripes somehow confuse insects and make them less likely to land on the animal (they’ve even tested this by painting stripes on regular horses) which is an evolutionary advantage against the deadly diseases spread by horseflies.
However, it is important to point out that human color vision is relatively unique in the animal kingdom. Almost all other mammals are, by human standards, red-green colorblind, so even though an animal’s camouflage doesn’t work on humans, it might well work on other animals. This is why tigers stay camouflaged even though they’re orange, and why hunters can wear blaze orange and not be visible to deer from a mile off.
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