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.

More than 70 years ago, mathematician Alan Turing proposed a mechanism that explained how patterns could emerge from bland uniformity. Scientists are still using his model—and adding new twists—to ...

Nature is full of many patterned animals, from the stripes on zebras, spots on leopards, to the intricate details on sea creatures. Researchers have studied for a long time the biological explanation ...

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 the ...

Reef fish in different oceans often develop similar color patterns because evolution explores the same set of biological possibilities.

Patterns abound in nature, from zebra stripes and leopard spots to honeycombs and bands of clouds. Somehow, these patterns form and organize all by themselves. To better understand how, researchers ...

Chris and Martin explain why creatures' patterns are so important to their survival. Chris and Martin explain why creatures' patterns are so important to their survival. Animals and insects use ...

For Rudyard Kipling, the answer of how zebras got their stripes was simple: to hide from predators in the dark and dappled forest of the High Veldt in Africa. But now there's a more scientific ...

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 ...