New story of animals' spots, stripes

For Rudyard Kipling, the answer of how zebras got their stripes was simple: to hide from predators in the dark and dappled forest of the High Veldt in Africa. But now there's a more scientific explanation, based on a mathematical model of cell-cell signaling, that provides more clues to how stripes and spots and other patterns emerge during animal development.

A Plains Zebra, Equus quagga, in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania Image: linkurl:Wikimedia commons,;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plains_Zebra_Equus_quagga.jpg Muhammad Mahdi Karim

In a study published this week in Royal Society Interface, researchers from the UK showed how cells can communicate with each other via small protrusions. As the protrusions continually form and disappear, neighboring cells receive chemical signals that tell them what color to be. Over time, patterns of spots and stripes appear. "Our work has shown a novel way in which cells may be able to communicate with one another in order to...