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.
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.
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.
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.
A control group where they mix the colors together and paint them grey would answer that
Tha smartest mother fucker in the room
Looks like this is the study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6776349/
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
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.
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.
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.
now that the song is playing forcefully in my brain i'm going to make you suffer with me
Good for their physical health, but not great for their personal goals and expectations.
Yup. Large creatures knows better than to wear stripes.
Oh, I was thinking more along the lines of any aspirations to not be a cow.
My Chemilkal Romance
That one zoo that painted a donkey and tried to pass it off as a zebra were just way ahead of their time
Why has evolution let these cows down?
I mean, we kind of hijacked evolution in favor of hypergrowth and ludicrous gazongas a long time ago.
Hippity, hoppity. Your natural selection is now my property!
I'm about to start dressing like beetlejuice
Reminds me of a donkey I saw in Mexico painted like a zebra trying to trick tourists
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.
After 10 Pacificos I will in fact be leaning
This is no donkey painted like a zebra, it's a majestic hybrid zonkey. Just 5 dollars to take a photo, or 3 for $10.
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!
This is why we need the paper linked with the meme. It seems obvious that a fly would prefer skin to paint.
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.
If they figure out if it's the white stripes or black stripes that do the trick they could reach 100%.
Some horse fly blankets and hoods have a zebra pattern, probably for the same reason.
I first read function as in mathemetical function, now I wonder, what the avarege zebras stripes function is
Moobra
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!
Why are the top comments in a science community so proudly anti-intellectual?
It's a meme community, it's kinda in the name. Brains go out, meme go in. Monke laugh
What if the flies just hated the smell of the paint lol
If you say Beeflejuice three times....
Cute dog
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
