![]() ![]() “In future the development of more effective techniques to ensure the persistence of black-and white stripes on livestock during the biting fly season (3-4 months) may be necessary.” “The economic impact of biting flies on the United States cattle production was estimated at $2.2bn per year. “Biting flies are the most damaging arthropod pests of cattle worldwide,” the report said. If so, it could ease one of the most persistent pest problems that face cattle.įlies stop cattle from grazing, feeding and sleeping, and can cause “bunching behaviours”, where cattle jostle for space to escape flies, causing heat stress and injury. The researchers now say more work is needed, both to confirm the link and to develop less labor-intensive ways of ensuring cows remain patterned and zebra-like. Previous studies found that stripes confuse a fly’s motion detection, causing them to approach animals at a higher speed, but also to fail to decelerate properly. “This phenomenon has been explained as modulation brightness or polarized light,” the authors wrote. But researchers believe this is the first time cattle have been painted and studied in such a way. Previous studies have found that flies are less likely to land on horses wearing striped blankets and other objects painted with stripes. The ersatz zebras were observed to demonstrate only 40 fly-repelling behaviours (such as flicking their tails and shaking their heads) every 30 minutes, compared with 53 and 54 fly-repelling behaviours in the others. Only 55 flies were observed on the zebra cows, compared with 111 on the black-painted cows and 128 on the control cows. ![]() ![]() The process then repeated so, over nine days, each cow spent three days striped, painted black or unpainted. Two of the cows were painted with white stripes, two with black stripes and two were left unpainted for a control. ![]()
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