Some animals carry patterns so precise and mathematically exact that scientists struggle to explain how nature produced them ...

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.

Kenya, Amboseli National Park, close up of zebra stripes. Scientists aren’t sure, but one theory, dubbed the “motion dazzle hypothesis,” suggests that high-contrast patterns create an optical illusion ...

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 ...

The honeycomb design on breakfast cereal, the fleur-de-lis spikes on an iron gate, a constellation of guilloché spirals on our banknotes—if we look close enough, most of our built environment is ...

🛍️ Amazon Prime Day: The best deals chosen by our editors 🛍️ By Amber Dance/Knowable Magazine Published Jun 1, 2024 12:00 PM EDT This article was originally featured on Knowable Magazine. There’s a ...