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 ...

When tigers stalk their prey, usually in the murky light of dusk or dawn, they are nearly invisible. Whether they live in grasslands, forests or jungles, wild tigers have deep orange coats with dark ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...