Wave the Stripes on the Zebra
October 21, 2011
One of Kipling’s Just-So Stories is “How the Leopard Got His Spots.” In the fanciful tale for children, the sandy-colored leopard and the Ethiopian make an arrangement to share features so that they can camouflage themselves in the forest. Spots and stripes are widespread in the living world, but how do they come about? Surely science can come up with a better explanation than Kipling’s. Just so, a recent scientific paper suggests that understanding the process is still a long way off.
