Study
Benefits of zebra stripes: behaviour of tabanid flies around zebras and horses
Caro, Tim; Argueta, Yvette; Briolat, Emmanuelle S.; Bruggink, Joren; Kasprowsky, Maurice; Lake, Jai; Mitchell, Matthew J.; Richardson, Sarah; How, Martin
PLOS ONE, 2019
Filmed horseflies approaching and landing on captive zebras and domestic horses in the same field, then — critically — put striped, black and white coats on the same individual horses and recorded fly behaviour again, so the animal was held constant and only the pattern varied.
- Studied in
- Equus quagga, Equus caballus, Tabanidae
- Sample size
- video-tracked fly approaches to zebras, horses, and horses in coats
Flies approached zebras and horses at similar rates but landed on zebras far less often. Horses wearing striped coats received fewer landings than the same horses wearing plain coats, while the uncovered head — identical in both conditions — showed no difference. Flies failed to decelerate properly on approach to striped surfaces, often colliding or veering away.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Stripes disrupt the fly’s approach and landing behaviour at close range rather than deterring it from a distance, and the effect is a property of the pattern rather than of the animal wearing it.
How NatureHQ reads it
The experiment that turns a correlation into a demonstration. The coat design is the elegant part: the same horse, on the same day, in the same field, differing only in what it is wearing — and the bare head acting as an internal control that rules out any whole-animal explanation such as smell or temperature.
- One fly family in one region; tsetse and other biting flies are not covered by this design.
- Captive zebras and domestic horses rather than wild populations.
- Shows that landing is disrupted without establishing what visual process is disrupted.
Putting zebra coats on horses
Striping tracks biting-fly distribution across all equids. Is the pattern itself doing something to flies, or is it something else about zebras?
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Public Library of SciencePublished in a PLOS journal under CC BY 4.0.
doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210831
Checked against Crossref on 2026-09-28, and they agree on the title, the authors and the year.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-09-03.