And very unusual unstriped individual zebras are not shunned by group members, and they breed successfully. Striped members of the horse family do not groom each other – a form of social bonding – more than unstriped equid species either. Could it be useful in individual recognition? This possibility seems highly unlikely given that uniformly colored domestic horses can recognize other individuals by sight and sound. What about the idea that stripes help zebras engage with members of their own species? Every zebra has a unique pattern of striping. So much for the evading-predators hypothesis. So stripes cannot be a very effective anti-predator defense against this important carnivore. Most damaging, zebras are a preferred prey item for lions – in study after study across Africa, lions kill them more than might be expected from their numerical abundance. So stripes are unlikely to be of much use in anti-predator defense. Worse still for this idea, the eyesight of lions and spotted hyenas is much weaker than ours these predators can only resolve stripes when zebras are very close up, at a distance when they can likely hear or smell the prey anyway.

Zebra stripes