This seems like something that would have been covered already but I couldn’t find it in the archives or the SDMB search. Why the stripes? My guess is to camoflauge (sp?) the size of the herd. A lion would probably go dizzy staring at a bunch of zebra stripes. So what’s the straight dope?
As I recall, Cecil answered this about twenty-five years ago. Don’t you have the Canon memorized? 
Yeah, you’re right. It is for disguise, but not of the size of the herd. Instead, it makes it difficult for a predator to focus on an individual.
Now, nobody hassle poor Winky or hijack this thread with a discussion of dazzle camoflage in wartime. 
Thanks dropzone.
I figured Cecil had it covered.
Speaking of dazzle camoflage… 
I’ve been hearing that “they” were going to start using it as far back as I can remember, but have yet to see an example put into practical use. Is it actually being used now?
All that watching Animal Planet and I miss one I know!
Dropzone is right on the money. Remember, in general most predators have worse vision than humans do (I think felines are near-sighted) and possibly color blindness to boot. While you and I can distinguish fairly easily the separate Zebras a lion (for example) has a harder time picking one out.
The aquarium in Monterey, California has an exhibit that demonstrates this. They show a video of a school of fish, first as it normally appears, then with one fish colored blue. Needless to say, it’s a lot easier to follow one fish the second time through.
Stripes do the same thing for zebras; they camoflage the outlines of the individual zebras.
Steve-o
“Start using it”?
Don’t you mean “start using it again”?
It was used extensively on WWI warships. But you knew that, yes?
I remember that exhibit. The aquarium there is amazing. I’m looking forward to my next trip back to Cali for some wine drinking and a return visit to Monterey.
Actually, I had no idea that it was used in WWI. I’ll have to look that one up… interesting.
More specifically, I’ve always heard that “they” were going to use it on military jets. I believe that some WWII P-38’s used it, but is it used now? It seems like just painting the thing a shde of blue a tad whiter than sky blue on bottom, and a light greenish brown on top would be the best thing.
I assume the military wants to camo their planes so they can’t be seen while they’re still on the ground, because I don’t know how painting a plane any color – dazzle, blue or otherwise – would help to conceal it in the air where you spot it’s silhouette against a bright (glowing) sky.
To accomplish that, I would suggest another WWI (or was it II?) stragegy the US (or some other military) devised to conceal ships (or was it planes?) against a daylit sky. Sounds absurd, but it works: they covered the object with lit light bulbs! The object gives off its own light – like the sky behind it – and looks invisible. Ingenious, really!
(Don’t know if it was ever used in the field, but I’ve seen the old demonstration films, and it works like a charm.)
In WWII, U.S. Navy warplanes were generally painted Navy blue on top to blend in with the ocean when viewed from above and a sky blue/gray to blend in with the sky when viewed from below.
The “Ulithi” paint scheme used for a time by the U.S. Navy in WWII was a sort of dazzle scheme, but it was also designed to give aircraft carriers the apparent silhouette of a smaller (and therefore less enticing to an attacker) warship. I’ve tried for years to find some good shots and specs for the Ulithi sceme (I was going to camo my van to look like a Ferrari), but I still don’t know what color the paint scheme was because all the photographs I’ve seen are in black and white!
The Japanese did similar things, even going so far as to paint turrets on the flat carrier decks in order to make them look like cruisers. I’m pretty sure that trick worked at least once, but I can’t remember the circumstances.
The above represents everything I know about zebras.
Speaking of good paint jobs, in the Kosovo war, the Serbs supposedly painted old trucks and WW2-era relics to look like their jets and tanks from the air. Apparently it worked, because NATO claimed to have detroyed almost all of the Serb’s tanks and MiGs in Kosovo, only to have most of this “destroyed” equipment pop up after the bombing stopped and return to Serbia :o. You’ll notice NATO doesn’t like to talk about the Kosovo bombing anymore.
How crafty am I? I camoflaged this thread to look like a post on zebras, but any reader of the thread would find out that most of it has absolutely nothing to do with zebras.
Interesting stuff about the camo techniques described above though. I’m definitely going to look into some of that. I might even read up on zebras while I’m at it.
Sofa King, the Battleship Texas is currently painted in a Ulithi scheme; IIRC, the colors are dark gray, olive and black. I couldn’t find a picture though; the Texas Parks and Wildlife site only has pictures from its restoration (all gray at the time) and we didn’t take any when we went a few months ago. I don’t know how you could work Ferrari Red into the scheme…
I thought that the Ulithi scheme was a zebra scheme, in that the rough vertical blocks of color act as zebras stripes, obscuring the outline of the ships in a harbor (or maybe in a convoy.) winky99, how’s that for working zebras back into things?