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 ...

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 ...

The mottled patterns that adorn Africa’s tallest creatures are passed down from their mothers, a new study suggests. A giraffe calf inherits spots that are similar to those of its mother in terms of ...

The mottled spots giraffes are known for aren't random, according to a new study that suggests that the patterns are inherited maternally — and that they may impact the chances of a calf surviving its ...

From spotty leopards to stripy zebras, nature has no shortage of distinct patterns on animals and plants. Now, the age-old question of how these patterns developed may have finally been solved.

Shortly before his death, Alan Turing published a provocative paper outlining his theory for how complex, irregular patterns emerge in nature—his version of how the leopard got its spots. These ...

What happens if you cross a fish that has white spots on a black body with another fish that has black spots on a white body? You might think that you’d get a fish with a single uniform colour, or one ...

On a battered rock in an ancient Martian riverbed, a pattern of dark, rounded patches has jolted planetary science. These ...

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 ...

Spots and stripes can be found everywhere in the animal kingdom. From the savannahs of Africa to the coastal waters off southern Australia, countless species boast distinctive markings. For decades, ...