Zebra stripes through the eyes of their predators, zebra and humans

Took photographs of zebras in natural habitat and processed them through models of lion and spotted hyena vision — accounting for their spatial acuity and colour sensitivity — to determine at what distances and light levels the stripes remain resolvable to those predators.

Studied in

Equus quagga, Panthera leo, Crocuta crocuta

Sample size

photographs of wild zebras processed through predator visual models

Stripes are indistinguishable to lions and hyenas beyond roughly fifty metres in daylight and at much shorter distances at twilight or night, by which point the predator has almost certainly detected the zebra by other means. Zebras themselves also cannot resolve the stripes of a conspecific at the distances the social-recognition hypothesis requires.

• A modelling study built on measured visual parameters rather than behavioural tests of predators.
• Acuity estimates for lion and hyena vision carry uncertainty that propagates into the distance thresholds.
• It addresses whether stripes can be resolved, not whether an unresolved striped animal looks different from a plain one in some other respect.

• Zebra

  Across every wild horse, ass and zebra, striping tracks one thing: where biting flies are. It shows no association with predators, woodland, temperature range or social living.

• Zebra

  Modelled through lion and hyena vision, zebra stripes blur into grey beyond about fifty metres in daylight — and far closer at dusk. By the time a predator can resolve them it has already found the zebra.