There’s a reason fashion designers look to animal prints for inspiration. Creatures have evolved a dizzying array of patterns: stripes, spots, diamonds, chevrons, hexagons and even mazelike designs.

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Sara Tabin is a science contributor writing about animals. Scientists aren’t sure, but one theory, dubbed the “motion dazzle ...

Stripes are common in our lives. It’s a pretty basic pattern, and easy to take for granted. As an applied mathematician who studies how patterns form in nature, though, I am wowed by the striped ...

Some patterns arise simply or randomly, but others develop via complex, precise interactions of pattern-generating systems. Their beauty aside, the intricacies of these systems are inspiring the ...

Nature has no shortage of patterns, from spots on leopards to stripes on zebras and hexagons on boxfish. But a full explanation for how these patterns form has remained elusive. Now engineers at CU ...

How did the zebra get its stripes? The fashionable patterned coat protects the animal from horsefly bites by disorienting the flies during the landing process, research has shown. But how exactly do ...