zebra

Weekend Diversion: Painting Animals to look like other Animals

esiegel — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 13:45:05 +0000

Weekend Diversion: Painting Animals to look like other Animals

"Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?" -Pablo Picasso

As an animal lover, like others here on scienceblogs, as well as a big fan of Halloween costumes, it's probably unsurprising that a good, creative animal costume will crack me up.

Three more turtle dogs and a giant rat will complete the set!

Turn your sweet, harmless puppy into the fearsome guardian of Hades by adding two extra heads!

Sometimes, you just need to play to your strengths. In this case, it's ridiculous cuteness.

Dressing animals like other animals is practically its own artform by now, but recently a new twist has caught my attention, and I had to share it with you. For a song this weekend, I bring you Billy Bragg's

Must I Paint You A Picture,

but even that might not prepare you for the craze that is... painting and dyeing animals to look like other animals! Without further ado, here are some of the greatest ones I've been able to find.

Although they're still more likely to *fetch* bamboo than to eat it.

If you want to turn your dog into a panda, why settle for getting a panda costume, when you can literally turn your dog into a panda?! You know you've done a great job when your animal is getting reactions like this.

"Are you serious? I can *really* pet this panda???"

And skunks might not be the most appealing of animals, but if you're already a black dog with white marks, aren't you just asking for it?

...and then they told me that *I* smelled bad. Can you believe some people?!?!

Sometimes, simply applying a razor to a cat allows you to transform the king of your living room into the king of beasts!

This one still knows not to look directly at the camera. They steal your soul, you know.

Known as a lioncut, this can often be enhanced by a bit of color addition to your cat.

Otherwise, you can wind up looking a little too much like Wilford Brimley.

And, of course, if you're going to break out the paint, why not go all the way and turn your animal into a zebra?

Now you just need 50 others in the same costume, and she'll be invisible to lions (and lioncats)!

For those of you with horses, the zebra-painting is even better!

A beautiful paint job on a very sad horse.

Finally, if you've made it this far, you deserve the top 3 photos of painted animals that I've ever seen. Without further ado, here we go! Paint/dye your animal to turn them into...

Although, I don't think any amount of painting will give this dog the temperament of a tiger.

3.) a tiger!

"To denounce the evils of truth and love." "To extend our reach to the stars above."

2.) a Pikachu from Pokémon! And the number one picture of a painted/dyed animal on the internet...

All the ponies in this town are CRAZY!

1.) a Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony!

A pretty amazing find, and it definitely makes me want to turn my dog into a baby deer... as soon as she stops running away from me. Hope you enjoyed it, and have a great rest-of-your-weekend!

esiegel Sun, 07/01/2012 - 09:45

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this is horrible

I tend to agree. This fits with my perception that, for many people, pet equals toy.

Twilight Sparkle doesn't have hearts on her flank!

Pets are living creatures... not toys.

offtopic... waiting for your post on the LHC announcement coming wednesday!

@reader, there is one in the works, probably for tomorrow, in prep for Wednesday's big announcement!

The pikacat looks more like photoshop than dye.
That mlp dog is pretty awful :(

It seems so wrong....but so right...until Pikachu & Pony, just creepy!

Pikachu Cat and Twilight Sparkle Dog look like products of some strange LHC experiment...

Thankfully pikachu cat is just an edited photo.

THIS IS TERRIBLE! THESE ARE LIVING CREATURES WITH FEELINGS AND A HEART! THEY ARE NOT MEANT TO BE PAINTED!! DOES THIS IDIOT KNOW WHAT HARM THE CHEMICALS IN THE PAINTS HE USES IS DOING TO THE ANIMAL WHEN IT GETS INTO THEIR PORES? AND YES THEY HAVE PORES IN THEIR SKIN THE SAMEAS HUMANS DO!! I SAY TAKE THIS DOWN!!

take this down it's gross and stupid.

And the winner is:
...
The Three Headed dog because there was no paint involved.

the panda dog is just too cute. and the 3-headed dog is genius. and i hope they used natural vegetable dye on these animals!

It's wrong.

This is not healthy for animals nor is it funny. I'm telling you we are growing stronger as a community against animal abuse and soon people that do things like this will be in jail. You're a jackass for posting this.

You need to take this down it is wrong. Animals are not toys to be painted that cannot be healthy for them. The people that did this are ignorant and the poster as well for thinking people were going to see this and be okay with it. We work very hard to see animal abuse end, this isn't far from abuse. Animals are beautiful just the way they are born.

This is awesome, not only are the owners having fun, but the so are the pets, pets love attention, and this will get them lots. What pets don't care about is what color they are, if their painted or just muddy, and especially, pets don't care about whiners who are offended by this. Seriously, the double standard these people place on pet owners is sad. They think you should bathe the pet, and make it smell unnatural, and offensive to itself and other animals, but they think shouldn't paint them, which pets don't care about.
If they truly loved animals, and weren't posting just to hurt someones feelings, they would take the time to read up on the subject and get familiar with it. Mock rage is so lame.

What beautiful, and happy faces. Haters need to get informed and see a creative grooming show. These dogs LOVE this. The attention that is lavished on them, and the great care they get are second to none. You know what abuse is. A natural pet. Un brushed, unbathed, un clipped. Nails curling in to pads and poo hanging off the rear. I see it everyday from so called animal lovers. Get a clue

Guys, shut the hell up. Y'all paint yourselves up, pierce your shit, tattoo yourselves, mutilate your bodies, etc. I know my dog feels awesome as hell when I put his sweater on. If I painted him he'd probably think he has super powers.

Gosh, some people are hysterical, aren't they?

Personally, I prefer to eat animals rather than play with them, but to each his own, I say.

The Pikachu is Photoshopped, but the others are all real. What kind of paint do they use? It would have to be something that wouldn't hurt the animals (I hope)...

The products used on these animals is completely safe. The spray color and har dye is made specially for dogs. This is not animal abuse, like another person said we see the real abuse, when a dog is so badly matted we find thorn bushes and other objects tangled in their fur. This is just like us ladies who go to the beauty shop for a new color or men wanting a design in their fade. Please stop with the dramatics and inform yourself of how things are done before you jump to abuse allegations. What these people do is art and I see many dogs prance around knowing theyre rockin a new do

If I dressed you up as Frank N Furter (including putting on hairs on your legs) without your consent and paraded you around like that, would that not be abuse?

That is NOT Twilight Sparkle!!

I find it hilarious, But not as hilarious as these posts. "They are pets not toys"? So you think domesticating animals for your enjoyment is ok but not painting them? Get a life whiners or set them all free and let nature take its course.

" Get a life whiners"

An admonition at the end of a post whose entire content is one long whine...

How does that work?

This is animal cruelty~~dogs and cats lick themselves~~you have to wonder what they are ingesting when they lick this atrocious mess that humans put on them "for fun". HOW SAFE IS THIS??? And, yes, they have pores in their skin, too, in case you didn't know about that~~what is going to be absorbed through the pores?? If people want to paint something, why don't they paint themselves instead of inflicting this horrible behavior on innocent, helpless animals??? This should be outlawed~no two ways about it. It's not "cute", and a loving pet owner would not do it.

To all of those who are saying this is animal cruelty - It's NOT. The paint used on these animals is SAFE, non-toxic paints and dyes and is the same paint used in child face painting or something very similar. The animals are never harmed. The artists who paint these animals are very careful, and the paint is non-toxic. Some of these pictures aren't even real, they are photoshopped.

" If I dressed you up as Frank N Furter (including putting on hairs on your legs) without your consent and paraded you around like that, would that not be abuse? " <-- Toddlers in Tiara's does things like that to little girls, why not animals?

Goose, that doesn't answer the question.

Note the "?" at the end.

"Would that not be abuse?"

The answer to which cannot be "why not animals?" and it merely begs the question if your "answer" bit were "Toddlers in Tiaras do this to little girls".

Is that not abuse?

You remained silent on it.

"To all of those who are saying this is animal cruelty – It’s NOT."

To you saying that it's not animal cruelty, IT IS.

Ur ugly to do that on animal this is a crimes ,animals are not humains stop what you do because this is not humanistic you are crazy stop you manie rite now !!!

To those who think this is animal abuse: these groomers take time out of their lives to go to these grooming shows, in order to broaden their education and display their art. I know because I'm an artist and an owner of a dog grooming mobile business. In these shows, they are even further educated by Professionals who've been in this business since before you were in diapers. Most of these Professional groomers have had educational contracts with retail stores such as Petsmart, where you take your pets to be groomed and "Abused" just the same. It's so double standard. Before you post for all to see,
Educate yourselves. Needless to say, I'll bet these hair dyes are non-toxic, what do you think?! Since these ARE other peoples pets on the shows. GEEZ

....complain to any retail grooming salon, PETA, mobile grooming, etc. and ask if they have a state license to practice "animal abuse" and all
will say YES. It's state approved

To those who think this is animal abuse: these groomers take time out of their lives to go to these grooming shows,

And slaves were auctioned in show. Human trafficking is done by a gathering of interested people, likewise a show. This is not any form of evidence that this is not abuse.

Children are put into "Little Miss" pageants by parents who want to live fame vicariously. That the child TO PLEASE THEIR PARENTS will engage in the activity willingly is NO MORE RELEVANT to whether it's abuse than whether the paedo and the pre-pubescent child willingly agreed, without any force of violence, to have sex.

Because the one being abused has been preconditioned to respect and obey the commands of the other, even if they don't want to.

"Eat up your greens or you won't get any pudding" ring any bells? How about "Stranger Danger". Why do we need to teach our kids to NOT show obedience to adults? Because we teach them to obey us elsewhere.

Terrible! That kitten looks so sad... how ridiculous!

Wow First I can't believe that thies people took the time to do this they must LOVE their PET so MUCH to involve them into their fantasy. As for you Morons who think these animals are being in some way abused well you all need to return to the rock you have been hiding under, I am gussen the you are the same dumbasses that let your kids dye their hair any fluorescent color they can imagine but you are going to worry about a pet that probably eats better food then you and your pierrot looking kid....

As to you morons who think this isn't abuse, feel free to let people dress you up against your will in weird clothing and paint your face without your consent.

And wonder why painting a mark on someone's face when they're drunk and passed out is a common prank, not a common courtesy.

White horses are less attractive to horseflies

edyong — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:30:06 +0000

White horses are less attractive to horseflies

"That is Shadowfax. He is chief of the Maeras, lords of all horses, and not even Theoden, King of Rohan, has ever looked on a better. Does he not shine like silver, and run as smoothly as a swift stream?" - Gandalf

In the Lord of the Rings, Gandalf rides upon a magnificent white stallion called Shadowfax. White horses have been greatly prized in human societies as a sign of wealth and dignity, largely because their bright coats are both pretty and rare. There are reasons for that. In the wild, the same conspicuousness that inspires legendary tales also makes white horses vulnerable to predators and sensitive to skin cancer. But they have an unexpected benefit - they make horses less attractive to horseflies.

Anyone who has been bitten by a horsefly (formally, a tabanid) knows that they're much more irritating than your average midge or mosquito. Rather than puncturing skin, their mandibles are designed to rip and shear. As a result, their bites hurt and they can drive grazing animals to distraction. They can also transfer serious diseases, including Equine Infectious Anaemia, parasitic worms, and even anthrax.

Now, Gabor Horvath from Eotvos University, Hungary, has found that white coats are more horsefly-proof than darker ones. They reflect very little polarised light - light vibrating on a single plane - and it's this light that horseflies use to track down their next blood meal.

On a sunny June day, Horvath watched two horses - one brown and one white - as they grazed in a local field. Both were almost continuously attacked by horseflies and had to defend themselves by tail-swishing, kicking, shuddering, head-swinging, biting, licking and even rolling on the group. But the white horse had the better time of it - photographs revealed that, on average, the brown horse had 3.7 times more horseflies on or near it. Eventually, the attacks were so irritating that the horses were driven into a nearby shady forest, where they gained a temporary respite. Again, the brown horse was always the first to cave and spent longer in the shade.

Why did the flies prefer the brown horse and shun the white one? It wasn't to do with colour or brightness. When Horvath put up two pieces of matte cloth, one brown and one white, he found that both were unappealing to horseflies. It was only when he half-covered the brown cloth with a shiny, transparent plastic sheet did the flies start flocking.

Horvath says previous studies have shown that horseflies are attracted to polarised light. In his experiment, the shiny, brown surface reflects plenty of polarised light, vibrating in the horizontal place, regardless of the angle it's viewed from. Neither of the matte surfaces do this.

To demonstrate this even more clearly, Horvath built three life-size horse models, one brown, one black and one white, and all covered in a sticky coating. Using a polarimeter, he measured the polarised light bouncing off these models and showed that the stronger those reflections, the more flies became stuck to them. Even the parts of the models that reflected the most polarised light - the rump and hindquarters - attracted the most flies.

Horvath says that the horsefly's proclivity for horizontally polarised light probably has several functions. It could lead them to water sources where they can lay their eggs. And horseflies are usually dark and drab in colour, so landing on a white body could make them more conspicuous to hungry birds.

Regardless of the fly-proofing provided by white coats, it's clear that for wild horses, this benefit doesn't outweigh the many drawbacks. Otherwise, white horses would be far more naturally common. However, some grazing animals like the zebra and okapi are striped, and all individuals carry some degree of white banding. That hasn't escaped Horvath's attention and his paper ends on a tantalising note:

"We would like to mention that we are preparing a separate paper on the effect of stripes on host animals like zebra, okapi, etc. to the attraction of tabanid flies. We show that such stripes make the host quite tabanid-repellent."

Reference: Horvath et al. 2010. An unexpected advantage of whiteness in horses: the most horsefly-proof horse has a depolarizing white coat. Proc Roy Soc B http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2009.2202

More on horses: Jockey postures make things easier for horses and speed up races

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edyong Wed, 02/03/2010 - 03:30

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As a counter-example, I can remember a town near the Argentina-Chile border, famous for its horse flies around December. Huge things, they drew blood when they bit you. But if you wore white, you were OK. Anyone in a black T-shirt had nightmares - you could see them from miles away, going frantic, trying to evade the things. As soon as you went in the shade, they stopped following.

Isn't that a supporting example? White = fewer horseflies. What am I missing?

If, unlike a King, you groom your own horse every day (and especially want it to look good for horse shows), you don't want a grey/white horse - they are such a pain to keep clean and pretty. Which may explain why they are prized - the person who has a white horse also shows off he has money to hire a groom.

Sorry, Ed, I read the article as saying that the colour itself didn't matter - it was the polarisation. I can't see your average T-shirt cloth reflecting polarised light...

In popular mythology, the Camargue horses (live in swampy areas) are white, as any brown horse would be eaten to death by insects. So the old wives tale is true!

I would like to address your assertion that white horses are more prone to skin cancer.

Horses with white hairs and black skin are considered to be "grey." Truly white horses are white-haired and pink-skinned. Truly white horses do have an increased risk of developing squamous cell carcinoma due to sun exposure. Grey horses, on the other hand, are at an increased risk of developing melanoma unrelated to sun exposure. Grey horses are actually better off than their black-haired black-skinned counterparts in terms of sun exposure since their white hairs reflect more radiation than do darker hairs. Both grey and black horses are better off than truly white horses.

Grey horse melanoma is less like to be malignant than the melanoma occurring in non-grey horses and appears to be caused by some underlying genetic problem with the melanocytes.

Mirror Image

grrlscientist — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:59:59 +0000

Mirror Image

tags: zebras, Equus quagga burchelli, photography, Image of the Day

Burchell's (plains) zebras, Equus quagga burchelli, create a mirror image in their enclosure at the Zoological Park in Delhi, India.

Image: BBCNews.

Burchell's zebra has distinctive stripes that run diagonally and lengthways on the rump and continue on to the belly. They often have chestnut or yellowish "shadow" stripes in the middle of the white stripes on their rumps. If you look closely at the two animals in the image, you'll notice that they are not marked identically -- in fact, each individual zebra has a unique stripe pattern, just as humans have unique fingerprints.

There are three living species of zebras: Grevy's zebra, Equus grevyi, the mountain zebras, Equus zebra (two subspecies), and the Plains Zebra (above), which is the most common zebra species and has approximately twelve subspecies, including the now extinct Quagga, Equus quagga quagga.

grrlscientist Thu, 12/20/2007 - 08:59

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A 2004 paper by Groves and Bell argued that the Hartmann's Mountain Zebra should be considered a separate species from the Cape Mountain Zebra, in which case it would be Equus hartmannae. However, a Moodley and Harley paper in 2005 showed that there is no genetic evidence to regard the two populations of mountain zebras as anything more than different subspecies, while also arguing that the current separate populations are an artifact of historical human persecution.

Oh, and most recent thinking suggests that the Plains Zebra has at most 6 subspecies.

"Simultaneously all three went for the ball, and the coconut-like sound of their heads colliding secretly delighted the bird."

If only there was another skull in there...

Great photo!

I'm always amazed at how hard it can be to see such a funny striped animal in the bush. When in the open they look like they would be impossible to miss.

Photo of the Day #21: Plains Zebra

laelaps — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 06:34:59 +0000

Photo of the Day #21: Plains Zebra

There are some animals that seem to exist in a bit of taxonomic confusion (at least in the literature; I don't think zebras lose sleep over their species names), the Plains Zebra being one of these. The animals pictured above are from the Philadelphia Zoo and listed as being members of the species Equus burchellii, but recent work appears to show that this most common of Zebra species should really be called Equus quagga. Burchell's Zebra, then, is relegated to the status of a subspecies with the name Equus quagga burchellii, itself taking precedence over the subspecies Equus quagga antiquorum since it seems that what were once considered separate subspecies are actually one. You may also be wondering why the binomial for these horses is Equus quagga, as well, and that's because the extinct Quagga (Equus quagga quagga) is regarded as another subspecies of Plains Zebra, giving the group its species name. Indeed, the state of Zebra taxonomy can be a bit confusion, local or small-scale extinctions of populations once regarded as their own species or subspecies, only to reappear later elsewhere, can definitely give you a headache.

laelaps Mon, 10/29/2007 - 02:34

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That's really fascinating, I hadn't heard about the rearrangements, do you have any citations for the papers? Just curious, I'm interested to read more about it, thanks for mentioning this. Also, thanks for the great picture!

Thanks Anne-Marie; I actually hadn't heard about them until I started to look up what information I could put up about this picture. It seems like pretty complex stuff, local extinctions and migrating remnants making it hell for taxonomists, but the information I used here primarily came from;

Groves, C.P. & Bell, H.B. 2004. New investigations on the taxonomy of the zebras genus Equus, subgenus Hippotigris. Mammalian Biology. 69: 182-196.

Thanks for the citation, I appreciate it! Now that I've downloaded it I have a great excuse to further procrastinate a paper I'm supposed to be working on...
By the way, I am continually in awe of the number/quality of blog posts you produce while taking a full load of classes, you need to share your secrets with me sometime. ;)

Pretty Much My Favorite Animal…

zooillogix — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 20:36:00 +0000

Pretty Much My Favorite Animal…

The accidental product of a study abroad program in Italy, Eclyse is a visually fascinating example of mixed genetic material. Eclyse's mother was a zebra living at a German safari park. When she was sent on loan to Italy, she was allowed to roam free in an enclosure with both horses and zebras. Upon her return to the amusingly named Schloss Holte Stukenbrock in Germany, keepers were surprised to find she was pregnant but even more surprised to see the young foal. Called a "zorse" or a "zebroid" (pretty much lose, lose if you ask us), typically the offspring of a zebra and horse have stripes across the entire body. However, the match up is usually the other way around, with a male zebra and a smaller female horse. Researchers suspect that in this case, the horse's charming Italian accent and cheap chianti were too much for the German zebra to resist.

Zorse or comic book villain?

Fascinating video of how British people say the word "zebra"... and Eclyse the zorse.

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zooillogix Wed, 07/04/2007 - 16:36

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