Animal Vision: Hiding by standing out

Generally when we think of camouflage, subtle colours and soft shapes that resemble the background come to mind, not obvious patterns with bold colours and crisp outlines.

However, as optical illusions show, the visual system can be tricked. This goes for the visual systems of pretty much any animal, not just humans and in the evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, several animals have evolved to take advantage of the eye’s fallibility.

Rather than blend in, they hide by standing out. No conversation about bold colour patterns in animals could possibly begin by discussing anything other than the zebra. So let us start there; how did the zebra get its stripes? Well, more specifically, why did the zebra get its stripes?