In Black And White

Why zebras have stripes.

- Shreeshan Venkatesh

ZEBRAS HAVE have tested the probing eyes of evolutionary scientists for over 160 years. They evolved from the horse family in the last 4 million years and they gradually acquired the black and white stripes. Though there are several hypotheses to explain the purpose of the stripes, it has always remained shrouded in uncertainty. That is until Tim Caro, a professor of wildlife biology at the University of California, usa, set out to settle the question once and for all. Zebra Stripes is a captivating account of the process of scientific elimination to arrive at the ultimate truth behind the zebra’s distinctive stripes. The book is a culmination of over a decade of rigorous observation and testing of the various hypotheses from both the confines of libraries as well as the expanses of African grasslands.