There has been much debate about zebra's stripes including whether they are white on black, vice versa or neither. There has also been speculation on whether they are temperature-related (zebras from warmer locations have more) and whether they help reduce predation by making the animal difficult to track and/or make biting flies less effective. The tracking idea has been recently tested by a PhD student, Anna Hughes, getting humans to try to follow a range of images including stripes (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02zdksj). She casts some doubt on the notion that the stripes generate motion dazzle but human eyes are not quite the same as those of lions and biting flies.
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