斑马条纹之谜

Scientists believe they may have solved the mystery of why zebras have stripes.

科学家们认为他们可能已经发现了斑马条纹之谜。

Zebras likely evolved to have stripes in order to avert attacks from biting flies, a study, published Wednesday in the Public Library of Science ONE scientific journal, states.

本周三发表在《公共科学图书馆——科学期刊》上的一项研究表明，斑马进化出条纹可能是为了防止苍蝇叮咬。

In an experiment in which horses wore different patterned cloth coats, the horses wearing a striped pattern suffered far lower rates of flies landing on the coats than horses wearing a black or white coat, although there was no differences in the rate of attacks to the horses' naked heads, according to the study.

据该研究报告，在一个实验,研究员们让马穿着不同的花纹布外套,其中穿着条纹图案外套的马遭受苍蝇停在外套上的比例远低于马穿黑色或白色外套,而马的裸露的头部遭受攻击的概率则没什么差别。

Researchers examined the behavior of horse flies near captive zebras and uniformly colored horses and found that, although rates on the amount of time the flies spent circling the two different species did not differ -- fewer flies landed on zebras than horses.

研究人员对圈养的斑马和颜色一致的马的行为进行了研究，发现尽管苍蝇在两种不同的马周围盘旋的时间长短没有差别——落在斑马身上的苍蝇比落在马身上的苍蝇少。

"Taken together, these findings indicate that, up close, striped surfaces prevented flies from making a controlled landing but did not influence tabanid [fly] behaviour at a distance," according to the study.

“总的来说，这些发现表明，近距离的条纹表面可以阻止苍蝇进行故意着陆，但不会影响它们远距离的飞行行为。”该研究报告称。

Also, the acts of zebras swishing their tails and running away from flies resulted in "very few flies" landing on them or probing for blood, according to the study.

此外，研究还发现，斑马摆动尾巴、躲避苍蝇的行为会导致“很少有苍蝇”落在它们身上或嗅探血液。

However, the "precise mechanism" by which stripes avert attacks is unknown.

然而，条纹避免攻击的“准确机制”尚不清楚。

Martin How, a research fellow at the University of Bristol who specializes in animal vision, told The Associated Press that researchers were trying to get their minds "into the eye of the fly."

布里斯托尔大学专门研究动物视觉的研究员马丁·豪告诉美联社，研究人员正试图“深入研究苍蝇的眼睛”。

"They have very different eyes from us," How said.

“它们的眼睛跟我们是不一样的，”豪先生说道。

How told AP that reasons to be "quite excited" about the new findings include broader implications in terms of technology. 

豪先生告诉美联社称人们对新发现感到“非常兴奋”的原因包括在技术方面的更广泛含义。

For instance, in the case of driverless cars, which are inspired by the vision of insects, if stripes can disrupt a fly they may disrupt a driverless car system as well, he said.

他举例说，无人驾驶汽车的灵感就来自昆虫的视觉，如果条纹能扰乱苍蝇，它们也可能会扰乱无人驾驶汽车系统。

问题

根据文意，斑马的条纹可以起到什么作用？

A.降温

B.隐蔽自己

C.防苍蝇

D.吸引配偶

留言回复正确答案，即可获得红包啦，朋友们快来试试吧！

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