the flies
the flies
119 comments
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Looks like this is the study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6776349/
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You're a hero.
FYI if this sort of study is your thing, Temple Grandin published her studies as a volume and they're quite good reading. More of them delve into human psychology than you'd think for someone who's famous for working with animals. Source: I paged through it while waiting in a book store
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Doesnt this study just imply that paint repels mosquitos? If they wanted to disprove that I don't see why they wouldnt use black paint instead of what they did which was using black cows. If you paint a black cow black, and it gets bit less, that would sort of give it away wouldnt it?
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If you paint a black cow black, and it gets bit less, that would sort of give it away wouldnt it?
They already did sorta do that. One of the three groups was painted black on black, albeit with stripes. Those were bitten as much as the unpainted black cows.
To take it to the furthest conclusion I'd paint them entirely in black, and entirely in white (in case there's something different between the white and black paint besides the color).
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Like other insects, I believe flies orient themselves with light. Striped surfaces like this would cause some confusion with that. There's a few studies around about flight paths and light/surfaces around, if there's any interest I'll do a rummage. Light reflects, black absorbs remember. Very good for controlled contrast.
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The treatments were black-and-white painted stripes, black painted stripes, and no stripes (all-black body surface). Recorded fly-repelling behaviors were head throw, ear beat, leg stamp, skin twitch, and tail flick. Photo images of the right side of each cow were taken using a commercial digital camera after every observation and biting flies on the body and each leg were counted from the photo images. Here we show that the numbers of biting flies on Japanese Black cows painted with black-and-white stripes were significantly lower than those on non-painted cows and cows painted only with black stripes
The study says that zebra markings repels flies.
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In the cited study with buckets, it was shown that striped and spotted surfaces attract fewer flies.
That makes me think if Nguni cattle
have an easier time with those pests.If yes, that would be another plus for hardy landraces in place of overengineered, capitalmaxxed breeds.
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So, I was able to convince a coworker that I had a friend who worked at our nearby zoo, and that my friend let me in on the secret that zebras aren't real, they're just horses painted to look like that, "big zoo is lying to us to get our money," you know.
Well, long story short I'm gonna need to steal this image from you and crop it, thanks.
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I'm going on holiday to Cambodia in February. Guess I'll bring my body paint supplies and run around in war stripes over my body.
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now that the song is playing forcefully in my brain i'm going to make you suffer with me
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Don't forget to pack a wife.
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YESSS BEAT ME TO IT LMAO
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Can confirm, insects are drawn to brightness
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Luckily my soul is dark and bitter.
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That one zoo that painted a donkey and tried to pass it off as a zebra were just way ahead of their time
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Wasn't that a dog and a panda?
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I'm about to start dressing like beetlejuice
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Reminds me of a donkey I saw in Mexico painted like a zebra trying to trick tourists
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Sure, but there's also the secondary market of people who think it's hilarious to get a photo with a donkey painted like a zebra to trick tourists. Lean into it a bit, like wrestling, it could be fun.
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After 10 Pacificos I will in fact be leaning
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Source? I'm curious to read about this. How do they know the paint didn't do it? Another comment here said that spots also do the trick, so if you have two cows in the same field, one spotted and one solid colored, is the solid colored cow getting 2x as many flies? Do the stripes still work when surrounded by other cows who don't have stripes? So many questions!
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How do they know the paint didn't do it?
There were 3 groups of black cows: an unpainted control group, a black stripe group painted with black stripes (not very visible because the cows were already black), and a black and white painted group. The control group had similar results to the black stripe group, which suggests that the black paint alone didn't do anything.
So further research could be to compare to an all black painted group and an all white painted group, with no unpainted fur, as well. If it's the pattern, then one would expect the totally painted cattle of either paint color would see similar results as unpainted.
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Brilliant, thanks!
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This is why we need the paper linked with the meme. It seems obvious that a fly would prefer skin to paint.
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I like to see what you guys can find when you dig around. ;)
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If they figure out if it's the white stripes or black stripes that do the trick they could reach 100%.
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I first read function as in mathemetical function, now I wonder, what the avarege zebras stripes function is
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Pedantic warning: it’s not a conventional function, cuz it’d be multivalued for any given input no matter where you put the axes lol
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Some horse fly blankets and hoods have a zebra pattern, probably for the same reason.
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Moobra
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That's where Hershey's Cookies and Cream chocolate bars are from!
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Wait wait wait, I'm calling bullshit. I see no udders, nor any horns. That's obviously two people wearing a striped cow costume for Halloween, duh.
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So if flies are attracted to dead things, and black and white stripes deter flies, then I believe we've just explained Beetlejuice's appearance!
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QED
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What if the flies just hated the smell of the paint lol
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If you say Beeflejuice three times....
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Cute dog
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Time to dust off my old timey prison outfit
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Interesting. A while ago, I read that zebra stripes were meant to confuse predators. Basically, the idea was that when they ran as a herd, their stripes made it difficult to tell where one zebra ended and the other began. I wonder if that's considered bunk now or if this is supposed to be an additional benefit.
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moo
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Can someone forward this to Trump's team
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Awesome. Now narrow down the mechanism with further research.
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Sure, that it wasn't the smell of the paint, that drove the insects away?
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If you look at the study you can see that they also had a treatment of black stripes on black cows to control for just that:
The cows were assigned to treatments using a 3 × 3 Latin-square design. The treatments consisted of black-and-white painted stripes (B&W), black painted stripes (B), and no stripes (CONT) as a control (Fig 1).
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Do zebras smell of paint?
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This doesn't help very much.
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See, some people think forcible sterilization is never acceptable, and yet we have multiple comments from people that didn't read the study asking if the authors thought of something.
Maybe you'd know if you were literate.
You can have your balls back if you do your homework.
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This thread is like a Reddit/Lemmy Smart Guy combo. People who just assume paid researchers didn't consider this extremely basic thing they learned about in high school, and also hinting at IQ-based eugenics
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Alright, so for the idiots here, how is this not a study showing that paint repels mosquitos?
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The treatments were black-and-white painted stripes, black painted stripes, and no stripes (all-black body surface). Recorded fly-repelling behaviors were head throw, ear beat, leg stamp, skin twitch, and tail flick. Photo images of the right side of each cow were taken using a commercial digital camera after every observation and biting flies on the body and each leg were counted from the photo images. Here we show that the numbers of biting flies on Japanese Black cows painted with black-and-white stripes were significantly lower than those on non-painted cows and cows painted only with black stripes
Black paint was not as effective as black and white paint.
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Yay, more animal abuse.
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If it actually helps to deter insects, than I think it is the opposite of animal abuse.
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They might mean the paint itself is abuse, which I think most vegans would agree with, but the more solid part is the abuse around owning either a commercial farm cow, or a research and testing cow.
It is just a picture but its hard to assume this cow came in from the grassland asking for help with mosquitos, and we nice humans obliged.
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how exactly is painting a cow animal abuse? I'm curios
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119 comments
Did they study the paint chemicals themselves to see if that by itself was a natural bug repellant?
Did they check if the paint chemicals are even safe for cows?
🤔
What if it's just the white stripes (not the band)? Do white cows have the same number of flies? What if you paint them with black stripes?
Maybe those are answered in the article, but I'll never read it.
LOL, same. Not worth the reading time. Any which way you twist it, there's still probably way too many unknown factors.
Yes. They had a control group with only black stripes along with an unpainted group. I would have to assume they also checked the paints for potential repellents, but I only skimmed the article.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6776349/
Instead of unpainted black they should have done painted black, or done both.
There is also the paint creating a barrier.
I haven’t read the study, but most of these would need a placebo group, so divide the herd into thirds, one with no paint, one with stripes, and one fully painted white to get a baseline for each group. Also would be good to randomize which group each cow goes in each day so to rule out one cow who is especially tasty to flies.
Also blindfold the scientists and the cows so it's double blind. We don't want the cows acting in a fly-attracting way because of placebo.
Those groups also have another characteristic that changes: the amount of the cow covered in paint.
How do you determine if its that vs the stripes or colors?
I've not seen the study referenced, but if I were doing it I'd have cows I painted with white paint, white stripes, black paint, and a control I left unpainted.
Yes, obviously. But are the flies possibly repelled by the paint? Are the flies even able to bite through the paint?
Edit: 50% stripes, 50% reduction in bug bites.
Coincidence? I think not.
This study is posted in another comment here, but they left out the black paint group.
A control group where they mix the colors together and paint them grey would answer that
Can a biting fly even penetrate paint, to consume that precious bovine blood?
What if you actually read the study before asking questions 😅😜🤔