An 85-year-old amateur zoologist inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories has published her first paper, tackling one of nature’s toughest riddles: why does the zebra have stripes? Debate about the zebra’s coat has raged for 150 years. In the Journal of Natural History, Alison Cobb makes the case that it keeps the animal cool by surrounding it with dozens of tiny pockets of atmospheric turbulence. “Ever since I read How the Leopard Got His Spots in Kipling’s Just So Stories at bedtime when I was about four, I have wondered what zebra stripes are for,” she said. Mrs Cobb and her husband and co-author, Stephen, 71, lived in Kenya, southern Sudan and Mali during the late 1970s and 1980s.

Source: The Times June 12, 2019 23:06 UTC