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I always thought the explanation I heard as a kid ("The stripes help them blend in to the tall grass of the savannah") was a bit lacking - this makes much more sense!

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Agreed. I did have to read it three times in order to feel sure that I understood what they were trying to say; I found the abstract rather opaque.

So basically "it deters flies", right? I wonder why then, why would flies avoid striped skin?

No idea, but would idly speculate it could be related to the effect seen in bees, where stripes could be used to fool them into thinking the ground was closer or further away: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22915710

Flies are tiny automatons with only a few neurons controlling their entire behavior. I'd guess stripes hack that simple control system in some dead-simple way.

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