Bar Code Style for Zebras‏

Scanning Zebras  For scientists tracking zebras, point and shoot now involves a camera instead of a tranquilizer gun. That's because they can now use those distinctive black and white stripes to count a population, bar code style.

In the field, researchers snap a photo of a zebra and upload it to a computer with StripeSpotter, a software application developed by the University of Illinois at Chicago and Princeton University. On a screen they focus on the flank, where each stripe gets broken down into vertical strands of pixels. Those combinations are as unique to each zebra as fingerprints are to humans. A database scan quickly shows if the zebra is a new find.