Cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid biting fly attack

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/08/us/cows-painted-zebras-avoid-flies-scn-trnd/index.html

by ga-vu • 7 years ago

135 68 7 years ago

edition.cnn.com

axegon• 7 years ago

Camouflage for cows?

svennek• 7 years ago

Cowmouhflage?

lqet• 7 years ago

Cow-moo-flage!

fiedzia• 7 years ago

I can't wait for "april fools" announcement after thousands of farmers will paint their cows.

arkitaip• 7 years ago

I wonder if a poncho would with the same pattern would have the same effect...? brb registering ponchos4cows.com

Gys• 7 years ago

If covering the cow helps, the pattern on the cover will not make much difference? I assume covering itself is problematic and therefore (too) expensive.

OJFord• 7 years ago

Or, less bizarrely, presumably it also works if painted like a Friesian?

Angostura2• 7 years ago

The problem I have with the paper is regarding the nature of the controls.

They painted black and while stripes on the cows. But they don't say what the controls were that I can see. Unpainted cows? Or cows painted a single colour.

I'd want to see all white and all black painted animals - perhaps the makeup of the paint put off the flies?

iicc• 7 years ago

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Six Japanese Black cows were assigned to treatments using a 3 × 3 Latin-square design. The treatments were black-and-white painted stripes, black painted stripes, and no stripes (all-black body surface).

So apparently flies don't like white paint.

throwaway66920• 7 years ago

Seems like they’re missing a critical all white painted cow group

Angostura2• 7 years ago

Thank you. I missed that part. But yes, odd about the missing white paint :)

reportgunner• 7 years ago

Also is being painted healthy for the cows ?

Ensorceled2• 7 years ago

So covering the cows half in white paint, halved the number of bites?

Seems like a large number of flaws in this study:

1. This wasn't 100% so maybe flies avoided the painted cows and just went to bite the non painted cows in the study. Would this work if the whole herd was painted? I know from personal experience that the best mosquito repellant is to bring a "city slicker" as bait but you need DEET if one isn't available.

2. Maybe it's the paint and if you cover the entire cow the flies stay away entirely?

3. How long did this experiment run? Once they horseflies get hungry or ending their season, they get more aggressive (they are getting aggressive right now in Ontario)

clnhlzmn• 7 years ago

They did paint some of the cows with black paint to rule out the effect coming only from the paint itself.

oh_sigh2• 7 years ago

Seems like a large number of flaws in this post. Usually it's helpful to read a study before pointing out flaws in it.

Ensorceled2• 7 years ago

1 flaw. Missed the part where the also had black painted cows. Still doesn't cover the other 2 issues.

csunbird• 7 years ago

or maybe flies simply do not like the smell of paint and went to bite the ones without paint. Maybe if you paint all cows they continue biting the same, since they will rather bite cows with paint smell instead of dying of starvation

lonelappde• 7 years ago

It seems a different group did the same research last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212086

And if I recall this was also in the news several years ago.

pvaldes2• 7 years ago

Nature always in the middle of our way. Is so annoying that we can't turn Africa in a huge cow field... (roll eyes).

On the other way, milk fortified with Antimony white, or even better the sweet white lead paint, would do surprising things to children health...

patall• 7 years ago

It would be awesome if you could do this is a cowshed. Add a stripe projecting light source in the resting area so cows can ruminate with less disturbance.

k_sze• 7 years ago

6 cows doesn’t seem like a significant enough sample.

Anecdotally, I tend to attract mosquitoes a lot more than some other members of my family. I would imagine the same phenomenon is true among cows.

mywacaday• 7 years ago

My dad, my brother and I react badly to any king of insect bites, we get large 1-2 inch marks that swell and weep. I thought it was that we attract more bites but then wondered if that belief was because we react so badly. If a person didn't get the reactions would they even recall the bite. Anybody know if there is any research on this?

leni536• 7 years ago

This is a great Veritasium video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38gVZgE39K8

newman8r2• 7 years ago

I just answered someone above with something similar but... I go camping a lot but very rarely get a mosquito bite. Sometimes if they're really bad I will end up getting a couple of bites, but the bumps are highly delayed, and I cannot recall the feeling of ever actually being bitten.

Until this post, I didn't even realize people actually "felt" the bite as it was happening.

ordu• 7 years ago

6 cows doesn’t seem like a significant enough sample.

It would matter if we propose that different cows might have different traits that could bring such differences in bites counts. So it is not paint causes differences but cows themselves. It seems highly unlikely for me.

JoeAltmaier2• 7 years ago

I know of that phenomena! I had a Scout, after 6 days on Isle Royale and we were joking about our mosquito bites and how we looked like we all had rickets, calmly said "Mosquitoes don't bite me."

We all looked at him, and he didn't have a bite/blemish on him. Nothing. Not one.

I told him, you put that in a bottle and you'll be an instant millionaire.

openasocket• 7 years ago

I know that the swelling and itching from a mosquito bite is actually an allergic reaction to the mosquito's saliva. It's possible he was getting bitten, but was one of the few that doesn't have that allergic reaction.

danans• 7 years ago

This Veritasium video explores the links between genetics and attractiveness to mosquitos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38gVZgE39K8

One of the craziest phenomena it reveals is that once you've had malaria, you become more attractive to mosquitos than you were before!

softwaredoug• 7 years ago

Could this be applied to cut down on the drugs we need to give cattle?

sgt2• 7 years ago

I think the sample size is too low. I am willing to bet that once you start doing this, the flies will start adapting and learning - eventually completely ignoring the stripes after a few generations.

elliekelly• 7 years ago

I wonder if you could then remove the stripes and start the confused fly cycle over again?

rudolph9• 7 years ago

With enough time I 100% agree but considering the flys have not adapted for centuries to biting zebras with their stripes I’m skeptical this will happen any time soon.

raducu• 7 years ago

Zebras only existed for centuries?

sgt2• 7 years ago

I think you underestimate fly intelligence. There's been a lot of research done on e.g. fruit flies, and they are pretty intelligent compared to their neuron count, showing a simple thought process before acting.

airstrike• 7 years ago

At which point you remove the paint and instead paint zebras with cow-like patterns!

wmil• 7 years ago

I doubt it's that simple. The trick is taking advantage of a limitation in flies eyes. They can't just choose to ignore the stripes.

scotty79• 7 years ago

I think the article doesn't mention that but this is inspired by previous research on zebras, done to explain why zebras have evolved this kind of pattern.

steamer25• 7 years ago

I've heard that the stripes make it difficult to track an individual zebra against the backdrop of the whole herd. I.e., a lion might start chasing zebra A, but become disoriented and move onto zebra B who hasn't been worn down from direct pursuit. Researchers have supposedly observed that individual zebras marked with red paint smears tend to get eaten sooner.

spiderfarmer2• 7 years ago

This knowledge has already resulted in products like this horse blanket: https://www.boeren.nu/b_picture/6926/

L_226• 7 years ago

Do you think that the blanket itself might have some kind of influence on preventing biting insects? /sarcasm

spiderfarmer2• 7 years ago

Well, you can't comfortably cover their legs with a blanket so if flies are more attracted to regular blankets they still get bit more.

protomyth• 7 years ago

Somehow driving through South Dakota looking out over a vast field of seaweed eating, zebra striped cows was not the future I anticipated as a youth.

I'd like some more research given that cows come in black / white patterns, pure white, and pure black. Is stripes really a thing and how about the other patterns? Do we start breading for color now?

buryat• 7 years ago

Will it work for humans?

orblivion• 7 years ago

This sounds like an episode of Looney Tunes.

I wonder how long before the flies evolve to bother zebras?

Gpetrium• 7 years ago

It would be interesting to see whether certain flies evolutionary traits may develop if we start painting cows. It is entirely possible that Zebra stripes serves as a 'radar jammer' to flies and that it could help decrease fly bites, further studies may be of interest in this area.

If evolutionary traits are likely to occurs, it is worth noting that the size of cow (1,400,000,000) [1] and zebra (800,000)[2] population may have an impact on how fast these traits evolve to cope with the new normal.

[1] https://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/07/global-li... [2] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/where-do-zebras-live.htm...

Someone2• 7 years ago

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...:

”The treatments were black-and-white painted stripes, black painted stripes, and no stripes (all-black body surface)”

Weird that they didn’t have a fourth group with white painted stripes. Now, the group with black-and-white painted stripes is the only one that has white paint applied, so it could as well be that the white paint causes the difference.

anw• 7 years ago

Very interesting article.

I would love to drive by fields of zebra-painted cows, however it does make me wonder if there were other elements at play.

From the plos.org article above: "Biting flies are attracted to their host animals by odors, shape, movement, brightness, color, polarization and body temperature"

By painting on an animal, you are now changing not just the color (and perceived shape, which affects perception of movement), but also the odor (due to the paints) and perhaps interfering with how the flies will perceive the body temperature of the animal, too.

It would also be interesting to see how these specific data points compare between zebras and the cows used for these kinds of tests.

anon1m0us2• 7 years ago

If that's the case, then the flies will evolve to ignore the changes and adapt to the new zebra cows.

This is a short term fix at best.

Someone2• 7 years ago

You’re likely also changing their temperature (white paint reflects better).

Another element at play could be that (I’m making this up, but it doesn’t seem impossible to me) zebras have thicker skin than cows, so that only half the fly species (or perhaps even only older, larger flies) can extract blood from them.

lurquer2• 7 years ago

Moreover, if there is something about the color white that affects the flies biting, the expirement boils down to this: "If you cover 1/2 a cow with a substance that flies dislike, the cow receives 1/2 as many bites!"

ChuckMcM• 7 years ago

Clearly the disruptive startup idea here is yoga pants for cows. Well, yoga body suits. /s

I love the result. Given the farm automation for feeding, perhaps an automatic paint job could be added to that system as well.

Cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid biting fly attack

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