Indigenous groups that paint their bodies tend to live in areas where there is an abundance of bloodsucking horseflies, mosquitoes, or tsetse flies. A study in 2019 showed that this was not a coincidence: painted stripes on the body protect skin from insect bites. A model with no stripes attracted ten times as many biting insects as a model with white stripes painted on.
Interestingly, archaeological evidence suggests that body painting appeared before clothes, another way to protect against insect bites.
