Painting Zebra Stripes on Cows Could Save the Agriculture Industry Major Money

Plus, the vertical stripes are slimming as well as fashion-forward.
From CBS News:

A photo provided by Japanese researchers from the Aichi Agricultural Research Center and Kyoto University 

for a study published by PLOS One shows a cow painted with zebra stripes.

Tokyo — An experiment on a herd of cows in central Japan appears to have proven a radical, nature-inspired solution to a pest problem that plagues the agriculture industry.

Zebras and their gaudy coats have long intrigued scientists, spawning a raft of theories about how and why a few equine species developed stripes. The consensus finally settled around a single answer: The zigzag pattern was an evolutionary response to biting insects, especially carriers of deadly diseases. Insects, it seems, have a harder time landing on striped surfaces than solid-colored ones.

If it works for wild horses in Africa, why not cows in a Japanese pasture? So pondered the staff of the Aichi Agricultural Research Center, outside the city of Nagoya. Together with ag school colleagues at Kyoto University, the center decided to run an experiment on its herd of Japanese black cattle.

Using water-based spray paint, one group of cows was given a fresh coat of white stripes, about two inches wide, each morning. A second group got black stripes, and a third, the control group, went paint-free....MORE