Plains Zebra

The camouflage explanation has never survived testing well. What does survive is the biting-fly evidence: tabanids and tsetse land far less often on striped surfaces than on plain ones, in field experiments using painted horses and coated models alike. The stripes appear to disrupt the optical cues a fly uses in the final moment of approach, and in a region where these insects carry serious disease, that is a substantial return on a pattern.

Social structure is a harem of mares and foals held by one stallion, and those bands aggregate into the large herds that cross the Serengeti and the Makgadikgadi. Zebra typically lead mixed grazing successions, taking the coarse upper grass and leaving shorter, more nutritious growth for the wildebeest and gazelle behind them.