this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
1079 points (99.6% liked)

Science Memes

11021 readers
3572 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
1079
the flies (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
121 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is why we need the paper linked with the meme. It seems obvious that a fly would prefer skin to paint.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I like to see what you guys can find when you dig around. ;)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Brilliant, thanks!