• over_clox@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    147
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    2 months ago

    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?

    🤔

    • essteeyou@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      67
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • over_clox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        32
        ·
        2 months ago

        LOL, same. Not worth the reading time. Any which way you twist it, there’s still probably way too many unknown factors.

    • SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      40
      ·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • Tja@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        21
        ·
        2 months ago

        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.

      • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        2 months ago

        Those groups also have another characteristic that changes: the amount of the cow covered in paint.

        How do you determine if its that vs the stripes or colors?

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • over_clox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        Yes, obviously. But are the flies possibly repelled by the paint? Are the flies even able to bite through the paint?

        Edit: 50% stripes, 50% reduction in bug bites.

        Coincidence? I think not.

    • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      Doesnt this study just imply that paint repels mosquitos? If they wanted to disprove that I don’t see why they wouldnt use black paint instead of what they did which was using black cows. If you paint a black cow black, and it gets bit less, that would sort of give it away wouldnt it?

      • fossilesque@mander.xyzOPM
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        Like other insects, I believe flies orient themselves with light. Striped surfaces like this would cause some confusion with that. There’s a few studies around about flight paths and light/surfaces around, if there’s any interest I’ll do a rummage. Light reflects, black absorbs remember. Very good for controlled contrast.

        • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 months ago

          I get its supposed to be a sort of camouflage, but the group that had the best results also happened to be the only one that had stripes and a full cover of paint.

          The one concern I have with the other types of tests is that I’m not sure flies are attracted to non-animal surfaces in the same way. But then again I don’t know the mechanism of how a fly targets where to go and then how it gets there navigationally.

      • exasperation@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        2 months ago

        If you paint a black cow black, and it gets bit less, that would sort of give it away wouldnt it?

        They already did sorta do that. One of the three groups was painted black on black, albeit with stripes. Those were bitten as much as the unpainted black cows.

        To take it to the furthest conclusion I’d paint them entirely in black, and entirely in white (in case there’s something different between the white and black paint besides the color).

        • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 months ago

          Oh interesting I think I misread that middle group, I thought it was white stripes. I’ll have to go back over it when I have the time to look at the details. I agree with your last point though.

      • Dragonstaff@leminal.space
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        The treatments were black-and-white painted stripes, black painted stripes, and no stripes (all-black body surface). Recorded fly-repelling behaviors were head throw, ear beat, leg stamp, skin twitch, and tail flick. Photo images of the right side of each cow were taken using a commercial digital camera after every observation and biting flies on the body and each leg were counted from the photo images. Here we show that the numbers of biting flies on Japanese Black cows painted with black-and-white stripes were significantly lower than those on non-painted cows and cows painted only with black stripes

        The study says that zebra markings repels flies.

        • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 months ago

          It says at most that paint over skin will reduce mosquitos biting. Unless there is more expounded up in the study that was left out here.

  • wieson@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    85
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 months ago

    In the cited study with buckets, it was shown that striped and spotted surfaces attract fewer flies.

    That makes me think if Nguni cattle 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.

  • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    53
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    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.

  • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    42
    ·
    2 months ago

    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.

  • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    2 months ago

    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!

    • exasperation@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      2 months ago

      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.