Did they study the paint chemicals themselves to see if that by itself was a natural bug repellant?
Did they check if the paint chemicals are even safe for cows?
🤔
What if it’s just the white stripes (not the band)? Do white cows have the same number of flies? What if you paint them with black stripes?
Maybe those are answered in the article, but I’ll never read it.
Yes. They had a control group with only black stripes along with an unpainted group. I would have to assume they also checked the paints for potential repellents, but I only skimmed the article.
I haven’t read the study, but most of these would need a placebo group, so divide the herd into thirds, one with no paint, one with stripes, and one fully painted white to get a baseline for each group. Also would be good to randomize which group each cow goes in each day so to rule out one cow who is especially tasty to flies.
Those groups also have another characteristic that changes: the amount of the cow covered in paint.
How do you determine if its that vs the stripes or colors?
You paint a second control group the colors and patterns they already are
I’ve not seen the study referenced, but if I were doing it I’d have cows I painted with white paint, white stripes, black paint, and a control I left unpainted.
Yes, obviously. But are the flies possibly repelled by the paint? Are the flies even able to bite through the paint?
Edit: 50% stripes, 50% reduction in bug bites.
Coincidence? I think not.
A control group where they mix the colors together and paint them grey would answer that
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FYI if this sort of study is your thing, Temple Grandin published her studies as a volume and they’re quite good reading. More of them delve into human psychology than you’d think for someone who’s famous for working with animals. Source: I paged through it while waiting in a book store
Doesnt this study just imply that paint repels mosquitos? If they wanted to disprove that I don’t see why they wouldnt use black paint instead of what they did which was using black cows. If you paint a black cow black, and it gets bit less, that would sort of give it away wouldnt it?
If you paint a black cow black, and it gets bit less, that would sort of give it away wouldnt it?
They already did sorta do that. One of the three groups was painted black on black, albeit with stripes. Those were bitten as much as the unpainted black cows.
To take it to the furthest conclusion I’d paint them entirely in black, and entirely in white (in case there’s something different between the white and black paint besides the color).
Like other insects, I believe flies orient themselves with light. Striped surfaces like this would cause some confusion with that. There’s a few studies around about flight paths and light/surfaces around, if there’s any interest I’ll do a rummage. Light reflects, black absorbs remember. Very good for controlled contrast.
I get its supposed to be a sort of camouflage, but the group that had the best results also happened to be the only one that had stripes and a full cover of paint.
The one concern I have with the other types of tests is that I’m not sure flies are attracted to non-animal surfaces in the same way. But then again I don’t know the mechanism of how a fly targets where to go and then how it gets there navigationally.
The treatments were black-and-white painted stripes, black painted stripes, and no stripes (all-black body surface). Recorded fly-repelling behaviors were head throw, ear beat, leg stamp, skin twitch, and tail flick. Photo images of the right side of each cow were taken using a commercial digital camera after every observation and biting flies on the body and each leg were counted from the photo images. Here we show that the numbers of biting flies on Japanese Black cows painted with black-and-white stripes were significantly lower than those on non-painted cows and cows painted only with black stripes
The study says that zebra markings repels flies.
In the cited study with buckets, it was shown that striped and spotted surfaces attract fewer flies.
That makes me think if Nguni cattle have an easier time with those pests.
If yes, that would be another plus for hardy landraces in place of overengineered, capitalmaxxed breeds.
