HOW THE ZEBRA GOT ITS STRIPES. The caption is meant to remind you of the titles of Kipling’s “Just So Stories”—such as “How the Elephant Got His Trunk”, which begins: “In the High and Far-Off Times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk.” My parents read us the Kipling stories, which had a repeated refrain: “O Best Beloved”.
This article by Ed Yong in the Atlantic (February 20, 2019) describes research by scientists which addresses the question “Why do zebras have stripes?” Presumably, the stripes give the zebra an evolutionary advantage. But what is it?
One hypothesis has been that the stripes, sset against a background, serve as camouflage from predators. However, it turns out that lions and hyenas can’t even make out the stripes unless they get very close to the zebra.