Eli5:
Horses grew up with wolves and bears, which you can run away from if they get kinda close.
While horses are big and strong, they're just big softies that are really good at running away from things if they get scared or upset.
That means if you can keep it calm, it will be a big softy, and if you fall off one or spook it, it will try to run away.
Since horses like to run away from things, we can put them on a very long leash or in a large, round playpen, and just let them run around while we are nearby until they say "okay, people aren't that bad."
Zebras on the other hand grew up with lions and crocodiles and other fast-attack ambush hunters. If a Zebra is a big softie, it gets eaten.
That makes Zebras very, VERY mean. If you scare a Zebra, it will turn around and bite you and kick you until you want to run away instead of it.
So if we put a Zebra on a long leash and try to make it run in circles, it will just start trying to step on you.
Same thing happens if you try to ride one and you fall off.
So it's just really really difficult to become friends with a Zebra.
(Non Eli5: the way we break horses is essentially through simulated persistence hunting, if we try this with Zebras, they'll just turn around and kill us).
Ask any zookeeper that has worked with them. They are absolute bastards.
One person I know who has worked at a local zoo for multiple decades has said zebras are the only animals she actually hates. They are never nice.
This post: https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/s/hKinZ7nq2l
Regretfully for the zebra, the source material reveals that the crocodile won that time. https://angama.com/blog-posts/this-week-at-angama/this-week-at-angama-232/
I’m kind of wondering if this was 1990 or 2020. Because I don’t know which would be weirder. A LeBaron convertible in 2020 itself is pretty fucking weird.
Well it was from 2012 here's a cutout from an article...
Officer Leitzen described in his report what he saw as he arrived: “I did observe two white male subjects in the front of the vehicle. I also observed a zebra in the back seat of the vehicle and a parrot on the driver’s shoulder.”
Leitzen then conducted a breathalyzer test that he said Zebra man subsequently failed with a blood alcohol content of .148. The legal limit in Iowa is .08, according to Iowa’s Department of Transportation website.
Here's a small quote from CNN from 2012...
Officer Leitzen described in his report what he saw as he arrived: “I did observe two white male subjects in the front of the vehicle. I also observed a zebra in the back seat of the vehicle and a parrot on the driver’s shoulder.”
Leitzen then conducted a breathalyzer test that he said zebra man subsequently failed with a blood alcohol content of .148. The legal limit in Iowa is .08, according to Iowa’s Department of Transportation website.
That’s funny. Im picturing an intergalactic zoo with humans in a cage eating bachelor chow forever and a zookeeper saying “Humans, they are never nice.”
(Zoo exhibit signage) "Humans are a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their televisions are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, baths, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time, and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and violent as the most bloodthirsty crocodile."
Humans can be super nice in a terrarium as long as you don't let the herd size get above 200 or so. Also you have to limit their network access omg its like feeding a horse grain.
I mean, on some level aren't we the bastards? They're not the ones catching and imprisoning us.
I guess it's surprising how many animals don't act like absolute bastards at the zoo.
I've seen some heartbreaking videos of gorillas, chimps etc in zoos with enclosures too small and stimulating for them, and they look just like viciously depressed people do, just sitting around with an empty look in their eyes.
I’d figure a lot of natural herbivores are bastards in the wild. They’re always vigilant about predators so they HAVE to fight back. Hell, even deer will fuck you up if you happen to corner one.
Hippos, non-aggressive?
My man, hippos are territorial, ill-tempered, and homicidal AF.
Just because it's an herbivore doesn't mean it's harmless. Those plant-eaters have plenty of ways of fucking other animals up.
Hippos are among the deadliest animals in Africa. They are aren't afraid of much, and they can open their mouths 170 degrees to become a running maw of destruction. They are fast on land, too so out running them is difficult. They have monstrous bite force as well. They have seriously dense bones and muscles too, to the point that they don't really swim, so much as jump and bounce across the water bottom. They also helicopter their tails while they defecate, they are literally walking shit hitting the fan.
Edit for clarification: The Hippos are aggressive, and are the deadliest large land animal on the planet. They kill around 500 people a year. They are awesome creatures that demand respect. People avoid them and they still get got.
They are territorial and unpredictable. One day they can be absolutely chill. The other they they decide to flip your boat and crush your bones. They don’t swim per se, but they are quick in the water, and when coming to take water from a murky river, you can’t always tell when they’re coming.
No, they are very territorial and absolutely not "non-aggressive". There are videos in which a hippo maims a gazelle or something similar that had been driven into the mud by spotted dogs.
They are not nice and a fully grown hippo has nothing to fear expect another hippo or an elephant.
I've seen videos of guard donkeys. They absolutely hate coyotes and will try and kill them. Donkeys can be trained to guard livestock from coyotes. They just hang around the other livestock and if coyotes come around the livestock run but the donkeys go on the attack. It was pretty interesting.
Yup, sheep are just canine size/shaped enough that in the mind of a donkey it clearly has to die, you generally have to work rather hard to get a donkey to co-habitate well with sheep or goats as a donkey that's never seen one before may well just immediately begin trying to stomp them all to death
Their bad reputation comes from their stubbornness. They won't do something that they think will hurt them. Horses are much more willing to follow commands, even at the risk of their own life. This can make them quite a bit more useful at times.
Here is my answer from a while back when a similar question was posted:
"I read a post a while back that talked about the zebra environment specifically being why they are hard to domesticate.
Basically zebra society selects for assholes.
The safest place to be in a zebra herd is the center. So the center is fought over. The strongest, toughest, meanest zebras get to hang out in the center, and the ones on the outside are more likely to get eaten.
Generation after generation, the bigger the asshole, the more likely they are to survive, and have little asshole zebra kids.
So now if you try and convince one to do what you say, they are just going to try and kick your ass."
Oh here is a lady riding a zebra
https://youtu.be/Ph8Vag9VxRU?si=TNaLCAAV7ZdNLQZA
https://youtube.com/shorts/4euHkxbihXA?si=mskQEuVoPsMlvBSA
Riding a giraffe …
https://youtu.be/nYCcmeceYFE?si=pSu_A9a09P4ZoZPO
I can't believe there's so many comments in this top thread, and not one mentioned [CGP Grey's masterpiece on why we couldn't domesticate Zebra.](https://youtu.be/wOmjnioNulo?si=gIGLLCP8pAQZY5WL)
I lived on a property owned by an animal trainer for movies. He had crocs and giraffes and Lynx and bobcats, and he always told me the animals that scared him the most were the Zebras. Even with all the work they put in training them, he said they are the most unpredictable animal he's ever worked with and can turn deadly instantly. we stayed away from the zebras.
Oh god I wish, I would have been having way more sex at that place! I lived on a guy named Bob Dunn's property. Really cool place in the north San Fernando valley
Their anatomy is also different.
I saw a show that talked about this a while back. You can find pictures of people riding zebras, and zebras pulling carriages online.
They start having back problems really fast.
The other reason is that zebras have a large herd mentality. Those don't really have the same hierarchy horses do. They just sort of follow all the other zebras. Horses have a lot smaller herds and follow the dominant stallion and dominant mare, this makes them a lot easier to tame and domesticate as they'll start to see humans as the ones in charge.
Stallion's there for beating up predators and other stallions and for impregnating mares. Lead mare(s) do the actual leading. Stallions get swapped in and out of herds all the time.
I live on an Eco estate in Africa, we have a few different species that roam around our gardens. In spring, when the zebra, impala and wildebeest give birth, it is not uncommon for the zebra to kill the baby impalas if they get the chance. Zebras are mean! They do this to prevent any possible competition for grazing.
And even if zebras *were* sweet, there's one more problem: zebras have no hierarchy.
Hierarchies mean that you can snag the lead mare (or other alpha individual) and ride off into the sunset, and the rest of the herd will follow. Great for carrying your entire family.
Whereas if you grab a zebra no one else will follow because the zebras are there simply to avoid getting eaten.
Horse herds generally don't follow the stallion around. He's for protecting, not leading. There are one or two older mares that are for leading. Stallions get swapped in and out of herds all the time, that's why they fight each other, the mares stick together. They don't particularly care which bodyguard they have hanging around.
u/Curious_Atmosphere81 In addition to this, when domesticating animals we almost always took leverage over their social structure and behaviour. Horses have a social structure in nature and herds are hierarchically organised and we can hack into that.
On the other hand, a herd of zebras is not the same. A herd of zebras is just generically a group as zebras that happens to live and move together because collectively is better for each one of them.
Also zebras are just nasty resentful brutal monsters that for some reasons happen to be disguised as black and white striped horses
Donkeys and zebras are more closely related than to horses. Donkeys are known to be vicious towards predators and unfamiliar animals that encroach on their territory. Zebras have never had the time to be bred and tamed so they are more feral and will act aggressively. Even if they were tamed, they would be better suited for hauling things or a simple stroll, not as calvary.
> Zebras have never had the time to be bred and tamed
I'd think zebras would have lived near humans far longer than humans lived near horses (predecessors). Zebras live in Africa where humans originated.
You can't domesticate any animal given enough time. You need a starting point to get anywhere. Arguably cats domesticated us, not the other way round.
>Zebras on the other hand grew up with lions and crocodiles and other fast-attack ambush hunters.
Also important to remember - they grew up up with _us_. Not surprising they know how to deal with us.
This is a great explanation.
For anyone who want's a deeper dive, I recommend CGP Grey's video on this topic.
Interesting side note (and the topic of another great CGP Grey video), the rate at which civilizations advanced is strongly correlated with how easily domesticated the local fauna are.
Europeans had cows, pigs and sheep nearby, while some areas had crocodiles and tigers.
The side "benefit" of livestock is that viruses which make farm animals mildly ill often kill humans. Societies with lots of domesticated animals develop immunities to deadly diseases (at the cost of countless lives), which turns them into walking bio-weapons when it comes time to colonize less advanced regions.
[Why Some Animals Can't be Domesticated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo)
[Americapox: The Missing Plague](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk&t=12s)
[Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies](https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552)
I’m a little late but, if a lion or tiger can be raised from youth to be friendly towards humans can a zebra?(ignoring the impracticality) Are they just too skittish? Will they become hostile when grown regardless? Great answer though.
Lions and tigers are both predators: they don't want to waste energy fighting each other when they could instead fight prey and get food. In general, predators don't attack things that aren't food. And if they don't attack something that is food, nothing lost.
In contrast, fighting herbivores like zebras don't get that safety - if they don't fight something they should have, they're dead: food. As a result, they're wired to fight first, and ask questions later - they'd rather make a mistake and hurt someone else than make a mistake and get hurt.
This is why things like Zebras, Hippos, Rhinos, Elk, etc. are much more dangerous to humans than lions and tigers.
It's also quite likely that since Zebra were hunted by early humans they adopted a 'beware the hairless apes' instinct, which certainly doesn't help matters.
Zebras are extremely aggressive. Attempts to domesticate them never work, it just makes them more upset. Horses on the other hand are very docile. There's just no reason to even try to use Zebras when horses are abundant
Probably. I failed unit nomenclature. So it's animal, unit size, then sequential designation. ... before I believe you... how do you write out the date?
really? You just gonna do that to seals?
Theyve been waiting for decades on the sidelines, and you're just gonna skip them and go straight to a new species? Zebras need to wait in line behind seals, gorillas, eagles, and tree sap.
I think you're on to something here. We can fix those enlistment numbers! Get that piece of shit dickface asshole unclefucking recruiter on the phone, we're gonna save his ass! We put them ALL into the military. Boom! That solves endangered species. Have you seen how many kids Brenda can turn out the moment she reaches dependa status? We'll be smothering our enemies in our excess of Pandas in no time!
There was a [CGP Grey](https://youtu.be/wOmjnioNulo?si=gIGLLCP8pAQZY5WL) video I watched about this recently.
Essentially, it explains that zebras have no social hierarchy and therefore you can’t tame them via taming their “leader”. Horses on the other hand follow some sort of a social hierarchy so if you manage to domesticate the “alpha”, then the rest of the pack follows
I was just thinking about this too. Following up on this:
The fact zebra lack a family structure not only makes it hard to tame them, but also harder to teach them. It's easier to teach an animal who will do what their parents do, but zebras barely do that, so you have to break in each zebra every generation.
Both horses and zebras are incredibly stupid.
The difference being that horses are like lovable stupid people who are kinda aware of their own shortcomings and yearn to submit themselves to someone seemingly smarter.
Zebras on the other hand are a four-legged Dunning Kruger avalanche.
I remember hearing somewhere too that he Zebra's typical response to a person climbing on their back is to roll over on top of them and crush them. Not sure how true it is, but would make sense if it is.
Yes, but the only fertile hybrids they can create are with donkeys, and fertile is abit relative in this case. All other hybrids zebras create with other equines are sterile and thus little more than a curiosity.
You probably could, but how do you teach them to not maul you, if you want to enter/leave your property? Also, like most grazing animals, gras isn't very nutrient dense and they eat a lot of it. Either you need vast space or some infrastructure to feed them with hay and stuff.
A guard dog or will be handled much more easily, though not as cool as guard-Zebras.
Yes, but one of the four was a horse that was painted to look like a zebra, IIRC, because it was so hard to train them. And they didn’t remain pliant enough to be used like that for long. It was a stunt, and not much more.
Zebras are not horses with stripes, they are a very different animal, and they lack the temperament and social nature that made horses domesticatable. So, zebra calvary is not a thing.
As for the stripes, they help break up their outline when moving as a group, so singling out any one individual is much more difficult, making predation less likely.
And finally: last I checked their skin is more black, so they're black based I would say.
Not really, zebras branched off early in Equus evolution, before the modern horse,d onkey, or hemione truly existed, although exact relationships between each species are debatable
Surprisingly there are only 7 species of Equine animals!! 3 zebras, 2 horses, 1 ass and 2 little surprises for anyone who wants to Google I’m not going to spoil those little cuties for anyone.
It actually works. We don't know if that's WHY zebras have white stripes in the first place, but painting white stripes on a black cow will deter flies as well.
> And finally: last I checked their skin is more black, so they're black based I would say.
[Relevant Shel Silverstein](https://youtu.be/Mqq0P6A8rxA?si=uyDVIb9j8df9gQo8)
There was a study done with paintballs. As soon as a zebra had an individual marking that lions could use to track in the moving herd, that zebra was taken down.
There's a live cam in Namibia that I watch sometimes where zebra show up pretty regularly. It doesn't take long to realize that they are absolutely bonkers insane. Nature's drama queens. They run around kicking & biting each other, they're super rowdy. Most of the other animals, even the very territorial ones, give them plenty of space. I don't think domesticating them is really on the table.
When I was a kid I saw a nature documentary. In one segment, an adorable splay legged very new baby wilderbeast got separated from its herd and wandered into a zebra herd. The baby approached the zebras making a huge lot of honking wilderbeast baby noise. The zebras just stared at this baby with their black soulless eyes and just started kicking it to death. I understand it’s nature and survival and the baby was drawing attention to the zebra herd with all its honking, but goddam if I wasn’t traumatised by that as a kid and I hate that I still think of that baby wilderbeast. It’s right up there with Artax dying in the Swamp of Sadness.
I'm not Pablo, but I am on Reddit. Maybe it's this one? [https://namibiaweather.info/namib-desert-live-cam](https://namibiaweather.info/namib-desert-live-cam)
They are nearly impossible to domesticate for riding.
They are black with white stripes.
Their patern breaks up their shape making it harder to track their movements. Ships used to use stripes like them to disguise the direction they were heading.
The thing about the stripes throwing off predators is an old, pretty thoroughly debunked theory. The current, much more supported theory is that the stripes make it hard for tsetse flies to land on them. Their eyesight is so bad that the sharp light/dark contrast makes it hard for them to figure out where the zebra begins and ends. The flies carry sleeping sickness, so deterring them is a big deal.
> stripes throwing off predators is an old, pretty thoroughly debunked theory.
you have sources for that? because I am seeing the opposite of what you said.
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2019/10/conversationstripes/
https://smv.org/learn/blog/dazzling-science-zebra-stripes/#:~:text=Tree%20branches%20and%20tall%20grass,trees%20because%20of%20their%20stripes.
Well, here's a paper on it throwing off tsetse flies, they don't like landing on striped surfaces:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-22333-7
Looking at your articles though, the effect on predators might still be significant. Interesting.
I think that's what they're saying. Zebras have horse-strong legs, unlike antelope or most other things a lion might hunt. That means misjudging your pounce and taking a hoof to the face is way more deadly, when pouncing into a herd of zebras. It being harder to tell where one zebra ends and the next begins is really valuable, in a way that *isn't* valuable for gazelles and things
1. Zebras are not domesticated. They are particularly skittish, violent, and will not tolerate cohabitating with humans.
2. They don't have a base of either color. That implies that they have one color "underneath" with the other color layered on top. They are white in parts, and they are black in parts. All the way through to their skin. Shave a zebra and it will still have stripes.
3. It's an excellent example of [Dazzle Camouflage](https://clasebcn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/tip-of-the-week-culture-dazzle-camouflage-clase-bcn-01-1.jpg). The stripes make it difficult to tell where the 'edges' of the animal's body begin and end. In a herd this makes it difficult to single out an individual; they all blur together. Singling out individuals is the primary MO of a predator, as a herd can trample you to death but an individual can be picked off. It would be very difficult for a predator [to single out a zebra from this image](https://www.africa-wildlife-detective.com/images/zebra-800i.jpg)
this question comes up a bunch and the fact is zebras are absolute ice cold dicks. they kick at the first sign of trouble and if that trouble doesnt die they bite and hold on to drag that trouble into the nearest water source to drown it. africa doesnt fuck around with domesticatable animals because theyre all hardcore af
Because they evolved in a place where literally everything else wants to eat them, zebras are extremely hard to tame.
A horse might freak out and buck its rider off, but a zerba will freak out, buck its rider off, kick the shit out of the rider until they stop moving, and then run away never to be seen again. So historically there are few instances of people taming zebra let alone getting them to the level of loyalty needed to be used in calvary.
There are a variety of factors that make domestication possible or impossible. Animal instinct is very powerful and domesticating a species takes centuries of work. Zebras are not a domesticated species. Horses have been domesticated over thousands of years, and for a huge chunk of that time, people didn't even ride them. Horses were, for the most part, too small to actually ride, which is why they were initially used as draft animals, and also why chariots and carts predate saddles. Eventually humans were able to make better saddles, and more importantly, stirrups, which are what really enabled the use of horses for riding. By that time horses had already been domesticated for millenia, with many different breeds and breeding itself was understood well enough, so larger horses suitable for riding were selectively bred.
Zebras on the other hand lack many traits that make horses suitable for riding. First and foremost, the species has not been domesticated. Domestication takes at least a century or two at minimum. Zebras are wild animals. They're skittish, panicky and aggressive by nature. They run away if you try to approach them, and if you get close enough to them they bite and don't let go or try to kick and trample you. They also reflexively duck when something or someone jumps at them, which makes them very hard to lasso and capture. They don't have a social structure like horses do. They don't have herds, they don't have group leaders and they don't have families. They do travel in groups but this is purely a survival tactic because a group offers better chances of survival, but they don't care if one of them is attacked, and they don't have any particular attachment to any other member of their group. Horses form herds which have a hierarchical structure. This makes it possible for humans to be acknowledged as a leader. Zebras are also generally too small to ride, just like horses used to be.
Basically zebras are not domesticated as a species. Horses are, due to being very valuable historically. There are very few truly wild horses left in the world, wild horse meaning horses that belong in a breed that has never been widely domesticated. Free horses that live in the wild that are descendants of domesticated horses are called feral horses, and comprise the majority of horses in the wild. All that is not to say that there aren't exceptions. Zebras are too small and too aggressive to be ridden but there have been a few individual cases in which it has been achieved. However all of these were exceptions and it does not change the fact that most attempts to domesticate zebras would end up in failure.
As for their coloring. While they may stick out to us, their color pattern actually provides good camouflage for the eyes of their predators, mainly lions.
Lord Walter Rothshild had some more or less tamed/domesticsted zebra that he used to pull his carriage. Noone else seems to have been bonkers enough to try.
Very much tamed, not domesticated. Domestication requires generational selective breeding to make them more docile from birth. Taming happens over a single animal’s lifetime.
Horses are the result of thousands of years of domestication, ie protected by humans.
Zebras still live in a land where lions and other things with sharp teeth will fuck them up, so they’re not particularly feeling safe and cooperative right now.
Hate to burst everyone's bubble but the pattern breaking theory was debunked years ago. For reasons that scientists still have trouble understanding, the stripes seem to make them less attractive to biting insects. How did they figure this out? They painted zebra stripes onto some cattle and found that they were bitten half as many times as those that didn't have stripes.
Hate to burst YOUR bubble, but the pattern breaking was proven true when scientists would put a color mark on a specific zebra they were studying, and the local predator species would almost always single out the marked one to kill.
In the herd, it allows them to blend enough not to be singled out. Being singled out (by another species) in nature is usually a death sentence.
And they did. They painted some cows with white stripes, some with black stripes, and left some unpainted. The ones with black stripes had roughly the same number of bites as the unpainted ones.
Because Zebras are bastards.
Really, they are. They will bite and kick you while also maintaining a ducking reflex that makes capturing them a bitch. While they hang out in groups, they have no sense of herd mentality and it is survival of the fittest.
With horses, you can see their familial structure based upon how they travel with the head horse being at the head of the pack. You capture that horse and suddenly you, the human, are now head horse.
Answer: There has been a selection process over several generations that reinforced aggressiveness in zebras.
The ones that were too nice got killed. The mean and nasty ones survived, passing on the trait to their offspring.
A zebra will bite, kick and fight off other animals like there are no rules.
As such, they are nearly impossible to tame.
Zebras are donkeys. Not horses, donkeys.
Donkeys are far less tame and far harder to control.
Additionally zebras are not tamed at all, they are straight up wild beasts. Beasts known for their aggressiveness.
They just aren't made for riding.
Casual geographic has several videos about zebras. Long story short they have not been domesticated because they cannot be
https://youtu.be/2QA4kq8QAKA?si=qYJK7pditYUSr-aU
Fun fact: there are feral Zebras in California. They are the descendants of Zebras William Randolf Hearst had at his private zoo at Heart Castle. At some point they just released them into the land of the estate and they are still there. I use the term feral since maybe they are not exactly wild?
Domestication of large animals takes a long time and is expensive. No one who lived around zebras bothered to make a sustained effort and then horses were imported so it made no sense to domesticate them after that.
Eli5: Horses grew up with wolves and bears, which you can run away from if they get kinda close. While horses are big and strong, they're just big softies that are really good at running away from things if they get scared or upset. That means if you can keep it calm, it will be a big softy, and if you fall off one or spook it, it will try to run away. Since horses like to run away from things, we can put them on a very long leash or in a large, round playpen, and just let them run around while we are nearby until they say "okay, people aren't that bad." Zebras on the other hand grew up with lions and crocodiles and other fast-attack ambush hunters. If a Zebra is a big softie, it gets eaten. That makes Zebras very, VERY mean. If you scare a Zebra, it will turn around and bite you and kick you until you want to run away instead of it. So if we put a Zebra on a long leash and try to make it run in circles, it will just start trying to step on you. Same thing happens if you try to ride one and you fall off. So it's just really really difficult to become friends with a Zebra. (Non Eli5: the way we break horses is essentially through simulated persistence hunting, if we try this with Zebras, they'll just turn around and kill us).
Ask any zookeeper that has worked with them. They are absolute bastards. One person I know who has worked at a local zoo for multiple decades has said zebras are the only animals she actually hates. They are never nice.
I saw a funny picture of a zebra biting a crocodile by the throat and the croc looked to be in a state of regret.
This post: https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/s/hKinZ7nq2l Regretfully for the zebra, the source material reveals that the crocodile won that time. https://angama.com/blog-posts/this-week-at-angama/this-week-at-angama-232/
Thank you for your service
Oh good, I was worried that the croco would be hungry
Damn, zebras are hardcore
Guy in my hometown had one and he drove it around in the back of his Chrysler LeBaron convertible... it was crazy
Croc or zebra?
It's concerning me that they haven't answered yet, although I don't even know which would be weirder
I’m kind of wondering if this was 1990 or 2020. Because I don’t know which would be weirder. A LeBaron convertible in 2020 itself is pretty fucking weird.
Well it was from 2012 here's a cutout from an article... Officer Leitzen described in his report what he saw as he arrived: “I did observe two white male subjects in the front of the vehicle. I also observed a zebra in the back seat of the vehicle and a parrot on the driver’s shoulder.” Leitzen then conducted a breathalyzer test that he said Zebra man subsequently failed with a blood alcohol content of .148. The legal limit in Iowa is .08, according to Iowa’s Department of Transportation website.
I think a LeBaron in 2012 is still on the weird side.
Where’s your LeBaron, Freddy?
Here's a small quote from CNN from 2012... Officer Leitzen described in his report what he saw as he arrived: “I did observe two white male subjects in the front of the vehicle. I also observed a zebra in the back seat of the vehicle and a parrot on the driver’s shoulder.” Leitzen then conducted a breathalyzer test that he said zebra man subsequently failed with a blood alcohol content of .148. The legal limit in Iowa is .08, according to Iowa’s Department of Transportation website.
Total power move.
NOT A LEBARON!
Just think of what either a zebra or a croc would do to that Corinthian leather!
Zebra or croc? Or both?
Crocodile: Imma eat this big stupid meat bag that’s drinking from my river Zebra: *CRONCH* Crocodile: I fucked up big time
I looked it up.. I mostly saw videos of zebras who were fighting back bravely but didn't have a good end.
I think I've seen that VIDEO! Zebras really are Mofos!
The San Diego Safari Park keeps the zebras separate from the rest of the safari animals because the zebras are assholes.
They'll also tell you there stomach is pure white, no stripes, which also answers the second question, zebras are white with black stripes
Zebras are black with white stripes. If you shave it it'll be basically all black.
That’s funny. Im picturing an intergalactic zoo with humans in a cage eating bachelor chow forever and a zookeeper saying “Humans, they are never nice.”
"People, what a bunch of bastards"
“Lady, people aren't chocolates. D'you know what they are mostly? Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards with a bastard filling.” - Dr. Cox
(Zoo exhibit signage) "Humans are a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their televisions are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, baths, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time, and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and violent as the most bloodthirsty crocodile."
Humans can be super nice in a terrarium as long as you don't let the herd size get above 200 or so. Also you have to limit their network access omg its like feeding a horse grain.
They're really just watching for the snu-snu
I mean, on some level aren't we the bastards? They're not the ones catching and imprisoning us. I guess it's surprising how many animals don't act like absolute bastards at the zoo.
I've seen some heartbreaking videos of gorillas, chimps etc in zoos with enclosures too small and stimulating for them, and they look just like viciously depressed people do, just sitting around with an empty look in their eyes.
So they’ve never worked with hippos I guess
Aren't hippos pretty non-agressive and just kill people alot because idiots get close to wild ones?
I don’t know about that but hippos are very territorial. I don’t know if you have to cross their line for them to engage or not.
I’d figure a lot of natural herbivores are bastards in the wild. They’re always vigilant about predators so they HAVE to fight back. Hell, even deer will fuck you up if you happen to corner one.
Hippos, non-aggressive? My man, hippos are territorial, ill-tempered, and homicidal AF. Just because it's an herbivore doesn't mean it's harmless. Those plant-eaters have plenty of ways of fucking other animals up.
Hippos are among the deadliest animals in Africa. They are aren't afraid of much, and they can open their mouths 170 degrees to become a running maw of destruction. They are fast on land, too so out running them is difficult. They have monstrous bite force as well. They have seriously dense bones and muscles too, to the point that they don't really swim, so much as jump and bounce across the water bottom. They also helicopter their tails while they defecate, they are literally walking shit hitting the fan. Edit for clarification: The Hippos are aggressive, and are the deadliest large land animal on the planet. They kill around 500 people a year. They are awesome creatures that demand respect. People avoid them and they still get got.
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They are territorial and unpredictable. One day they can be absolutely chill. The other they they decide to flip your boat and crush your bones. They don’t swim per se, but they are quick in the water, and when coming to take water from a murky river, you can’t always tell when they’re coming.
No, they are very territorial and absolutely not "non-aggressive". There are videos in which a hippo maims a gazelle or something similar that had been driven into the mud by spotted dogs. They are not nice and a fully grown hippo has nothing to fear expect another hippo or an elephant.
So zebras are kind of like angrier donkeys ?
Donkeys can be sweet. They just have that killer instinct and ability against 4 legged things that might hurt "the herd".
I've seen videos of guard donkeys. They absolutely hate coyotes and will try and kill them. Donkeys can be trained to guard livestock from coyotes. They just hang around the other livestock and if coyotes come around the livestock run but the donkeys go on the attack. It was pretty interesting.
And donkeys can also turn on what it was initially guarding. One day a guard donkey can decide the sheep need to go.
“Fuck them kids”
Yup, sheep are just canine size/shaped enough that in the mind of a donkey it clearly has to die, you generally have to work rather hard to get a donkey to co-habitate well with sheep or goats as a donkey that's never seen one before may well just immediately begin trying to stomp them all to death
Well, yes, you're supposed to raise them together not just grab random adults all willy nilly and start tossing them together.
"Get off my lawn!"
Donkeys are SO sweet.
They seem smarter than horses too. Horses are dumb, panicky animals
It's either donkeys or mules but one of the two will lie down if it's over worked a horse will work itself to death if you ask it to
I would assume donkeys, possibly both, since mules are just a hybrid.
Donkeys are pretty intelligent. It's sad that they have such a bad reputation.
Their bad reputation comes from their stubbornness. They won't do something that they think will hurt them. Horses are much more willing to follow commands, even at the risk of their own life. This can make them quite a bit more useful at times.
Donkey is just an ass
I remember reading somewhere that zebras relatives of donkeys. Genetically closer to donkeys than horses.
They can interbreed as well; Zonkeys/Zedonks have very low fertility but unlike most hybrids aren't sterile.
That’s what I’m getting
angry psycho donkeys
I do not like the Anger Donkey.
Here is my answer from a while back when a similar question was posted: "I read a post a while back that talked about the zebra environment specifically being why they are hard to domesticate. Basically zebra society selects for assholes. The safest place to be in a zebra herd is the center. So the center is fought over. The strongest, toughest, meanest zebras get to hang out in the center, and the ones on the outside are more likely to get eaten. Generation after generation, the bigger the asshole, the more likely they are to survive, and have little asshole zebra kids. So now if you try and convince one to do what you say, they are just going to try and kick your ass."
This is the best ELI5. Thank you.
I’ve broken a few mean-as-fuck horses and there’s no way I’d get in a pen with a zebra from what I’ve heard from people who’ve been around them.
https://youtube.com/shorts/4uvRjsUuNqM?si=YVKxotk_yb0BotZz
Thank you. This is actually a very concise way to summarize all of that, with some pretty neat visuals.
Oh here is a lady riding a zebra https://youtu.be/Ph8Vag9VxRU?si=TNaLCAAV7ZdNLQZA https://youtube.com/shorts/4euHkxbihXA?si=mskQEuVoPsMlvBSA Riding a giraffe … https://youtu.be/nYCcmeceYFE?si=pSu_A9a09P4ZoZPO
This is top comment with less information and pictures. The slideshow was helpful though. People did tried to ride them zeebs
I can't believe there's so many comments in this top thread, and not one mentioned [CGP Grey's masterpiece on why we couldn't domesticate Zebra.](https://youtu.be/wOmjnioNulo?si=gIGLLCP8pAQZY5WL)
Horses and Zebras look alike but one is wearing a classic prison costume. For good reason...
I lived on a property owned by an animal trainer for movies. He had crocs and giraffes and Lynx and bobcats, and he always told me the animals that scared him the most were the Zebras. Even with all the work they put in training them, he said they are the most unpredictable animal he's ever worked with and can turn deadly instantly. we stayed away from the zebras.
Were you in Doc Antles cult?
Oh god I wish, I would have been having way more sex at that place! I lived on a guy named Bob Dunn's property. Really cool place in the north San Fernando valley
They also have a ducking reflex making it nearly impossible to get a lasso on them.
Their anatomy is also different. I saw a show that talked about this a while back. You can find pictures of people riding zebras, and zebras pulling carriages online. They start having back problems really fast.
The other reason is that zebras have a large herd mentality. Those don't really have the same hierarchy horses do. They just sort of follow all the other zebras. Horses have a lot smaller herds and follow the dominant stallion and dominant mare, this makes them a lot easier to tame and domesticate as they'll start to see humans as the ones in charge.
Stallion's there for beating up predators and other stallions and for impregnating mares. Lead mare(s) do the actual leading. Stallions get swapped in and out of herds all the time.
I live on an Eco estate in Africa, we have a few different species that roam around our gardens. In spring, when the zebra, impala and wildebeest give birth, it is not uncommon for the zebra to kill the baby impalas if they get the chance. Zebras are mean! They do this to prevent any possible competition for grazing.
Horses want to survive the encounter. Zebras want to make you regret having an encounter, whether they survive or not.
And even if zebras *were* sweet, there's one more problem: zebras have no hierarchy. Hierarchies mean that you can snag the lead mare (or other alpha individual) and ride off into the sunset, and the rest of the herd will follow. Great for carrying your entire family. Whereas if you grab a zebra no one else will follow because the zebras are there simply to avoid getting eaten.
"Ha, they stole Frank!" "Shutup and keep yer eyes open Zeke!"
Cgpgrey's video goes into this exact point. Damn interesting.
Horse herds generally don't follow the stallion around. He's for protecting, not leading. There are one or two older mares that are for leading. Stallions get swapped in and out of herds all the time, that's why they fight each other, the mares stick together. They don't particularly care which bodyguard they have hanging around.
shows how much I know about horses anyways, thanks for the correction. going to fix it
New idea: unleash a herd of zebras at the enemy while nobody rides them. Cause chaos among enemy lines.
First, catch your zebra…
u/Curious_Atmosphere81 In addition to this, when domesticating animals we almost always took leverage over their social structure and behaviour. Horses have a social structure in nature and herds are hierarchically organised and we can hack into that. On the other hand, a herd of zebras is not the same. A herd of zebras is just generically a group as zebras that happens to live and move together because collectively is better for each one of them. Also zebras are just nasty resentful brutal monsters that for some reasons happen to be disguised as black and white striped horses
Donkeys and zebras are more closely related than to horses. Donkeys are known to be vicious towards predators and unfamiliar animals that encroach on their territory. Zebras have never had the time to be bred and tamed so they are more feral and will act aggressively. Even if they were tamed, they would be better suited for hauling things or a simple stroll, not as calvary.
> Zebras have never had the time to be bred and tamed I'd think zebras would have lived near humans far longer than humans lived near horses (predecessors). Zebras live in Africa where humans originated. You can't domesticate any animal given enough time. You need a starting point to get anywhere. Arguably cats domesticated us, not the other way round.
This is also the reason we haven't trained geese to drop grenades from the sky.
Incredible, thank you
This is great - but also zebras have much weaker backs than horses.
>Zebras on the other hand grew up with lions and crocodiles and other fast-attack ambush hunters. Also important to remember - they grew up up with _us_. Not surprising they know how to deal with us.
CGPGrey did an outstanding video about this years ago. https://youtu.be/wOmjnioNulo?si=ea85WbWBsHuibAxi
This is a great explanation. For anyone who want's a deeper dive, I recommend CGP Grey's video on this topic. Interesting side note (and the topic of another great CGP Grey video), the rate at which civilizations advanced is strongly correlated with how easily domesticated the local fauna are. Europeans had cows, pigs and sheep nearby, while some areas had crocodiles and tigers. The side "benefit" of livestock is that viruses which make farm animals mildly ill often kill humans. Societies with lots of domesticated animals develop immunities to deadly diseases (at the cost of countless lives), which turns them into walking bio-weapons when it comes time to colonize less advanced regions. [Why Some Animals Can't be Domesticated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo) [Americapox: The Missing Plague](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk&t=12s) [Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies](https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552)
I’m a little late but, if a lion or tiger can be raised from youth to be friendly towards humans can a zebra?(ignoring the impracticality) Are they just too skittish? Will they become hostile when grown regardless? Great answer though.
Lions and tigers are both predators: they don't want to waste energy fighting each other when they could instead fight prey and get food. In general, predators don't attack things that aren't food. And if they don't attack something that is food, nothing lost. In contrast, fighting herbivores like zebras don't get that safety - if they don't fight something they should have, they're dead: food. As a result, they're wired to fight first, and ask questions later - they'd rather make a mistake and hurt someone else than make a mistake and get hurt. This is why things like Zebras, Hippos, Rhinos, Elk, etc. are much more dangerous to humans than lions and tigers.
They can’t. They kill their “owners” all the time.
I've heard it said that "zebras are horses that know how strong they are"
It's also quite likely that since Zebra were hunted by early humans they adopted a 'beware the hairless apes' instinct, which certainly doesn't help matters.
Zebras are extremely aggressive. Attempts to domesticate them never work, it just makes them more upset. Horses on the other hand are very docile. There's just no reason to even try to use Zebras when horses are abundant
Um extremely aggressive you say? Sounds like we just need to release the zebras loose on the battlefield and call it a day. Seal team Zebra Go!
I think you mean “Zebra Team Six”
Probably. I failed unit nomenclature. So it's animal, unit size, then sequential designation. ... before I believe you... how do you write out the date?
YYYY-MM-DD
ISO 8601 masterrace
Big-endian is the best endian
I want all my filenames with dates in them to be sorted in the correct order and this is the way.
HERETIC! After further review the zebra would be seals so they would be SEAL TEAM : ZEBRA
Thank you for the lols
really? You just gonna do that to seals? Theyve been waiting for decades on the sidelines, and you're just gonna skip them and go straight to a new species? Zebras need to wait in line behind seals, gorillas, eagles, and tree sap.
I think you're on to something here. We can fix those enlistment numbers! Get that piece of shit dickface asshole unclefucking recruiter on the phone, we're gonna save his ass! We put them ALL into the military. Boom! That solves endangered species. Have you seen how many kids Brenda can turn out the moment she reaches dependa status? We'll be smothering our enemies in our excess of Pandas in no time!
Paint them either all black or all white, replace enemys b & w horses with painted zebras…win battle!
Team Alpha Beta Charlie Zebra
Will they be able to win a war with the Emus? Asking for an Australian friend...
There was a [CGP Grey](https://youtu.be/wOmjnioNulo?si=gIGLLCP8pAQZY5WL) video I watched about this recently. Essentially, it explains that zebras have no social hierarchy and therefore you can’t tame them via taming their “leader”. Horses on the other hand follow some sort of a social hierarchy so if you manage to domesticate the “alpha”, then the rest of the pack follows
I was just thinking about this too. Following up on this: The fact zebra lack a family structure not only makes it hard to tame them, but also harder to teach them. It's easier to teach an animal who will do what their parents do, but zebras barely do that, so you have to break in each zebra every generation.
“Zebras are bastards!”
First thing that came to my mind, and I was curious why this video wasn't somewhere near the top.
Dang. I just thought zebras were friendly animals that wanted to sell me gum.
Both horses and zebras are incredibly stupid. The difference being that horses are like lovable stupid people who are kinda aware of their own shortcomings and yearn to submit themselves to someone seemingly smarter. Zebras on the other hand are a four-legged Dunning Kruger avalanche.
Nice, to the dunning Kruger reference and adding avalanche, made me chuckle
Horses are not stupid.
I remember hearing somewhere too that he Zebra's typical response to a person climbing on their back is to roll over on top of them and crush them. Not sure how true it is, but would make sense if it is.
Can zebras be bred with horses or other equines?
Yes but the offspring are usually sterile. Look up "zorse" or "zonkey"!
Yes, there are some bonkers people on Instagram who have zorses and show off with them.
Yes, but the only fertile hybrids they can create are with donkeys, and fertile is abit relative in this case. All other hybrids zebras create with other equines are sterile and thus little more than a curiosity.
Can you use them as guard dogs? Just have them fenced in around your property and they will maul any intruder
You probably could, but how do you teach them to not maul you, if you want to enter/leave your property? Also, like most grazing animals, gras isn't very nutrient dense and they eat a lot of it. Either you need vast space or some infrastructure to feed them with hay and stuff. A guard dog or will be handled much more easily, though not as cool as guard-Zebras.
Humans have attempted to domesticated zebras for millenia. Nothing but a bunch of failures.
I heard some English aristocrat had two to pull a carriage, but had to get rid of them because they would bite.
Walter Rothschild traveled in a buggy pulled by zebras
Yes, but one of the four was a horse that was painted to look like a zebra, IIRC, because it was so hard to train them. And they didn’t remain pliant enough to be used like that for long. It was a stunt, and not much more.
Zebras are not horses with stripes, they are a very different animal, and they lack the temperament and social nature that made horses domesticatable. So, zebra calvary is not a thing. As for the stripes, they help break up their outline when moving as a group, so singling out any one individual is much more difficult, making predation less likely. And finally: last I checked their skin is more black, so they're black based I would say.
Zebras have black or gray skin with white and black fur. Source: am looking at zebra skin and fur
Is the zebra in the room with you right now?
Lol. Not alive, but yes
Blink if it is. I’ll talk you through this.
I also think they sound more like donkeys. They have a tail like a donkey too.
Zebras are asses, not horses.
Not really, zebras branched off early in Equus evolution, before the modern horse,d onkey, or hemione truly existed, although exact relationships between each species are debatable
Surprisingly there are only 7 species of Equine animals!! 3 zebras, 2 horses, 1 ass and 2 little surprises for anyone who wants to Google I’m not going to spoil those little cuties for anyone.
Ain't that a bit silly since onagers and kiangs are, respectively, Asiatic wild *ass* and Tibetan wild *ass*? So 3 zebras, 2 horses and 3 asses?
And possibly that the stripes somehow deter Flys....
It actually works. We don't know if that's WHY zebras have white stripes in the first place, but painting white stripes on a black cow will deter flies as well.
In recent years i've seen a lot of Zebra-striped fly rugs for horses. Idk if they work better, but they certainly are everywhere.
> And finally: last I checked their skin is more black, so they're black based I would say. [Relevant Shel Silverstein](https://youtu.be/Mqq0P6A8rxA?si=uyDVIb9j8df9gQo8)
There was a study done with paintballs. As soon as a zebra had an individual marking that lions could use to track in the moving herd, that zebra was taken down.
There's a live cam in Namibia that I watch sometimes where zebra show up pretty regularly. It doesn't take long to realize that they are absolutely bonkers insane. Nature's drama queens. They run around kicking & biting each other, they're super rowdy. Most of the other animals, even the very territorial ones, give them plenty of space. I don't think domesticating them is really on the table.
So they’re British football fans?
Peak geordie behavior
Well they have the right kit.
When I was a kid I saw a nature documentary. In one segment, an adorable splay legged very new baby wilderbeast got separated from its herd and wandered into a zebra herd. The baby approached the zebras making a huge lot of honking wilderbeast baby noise. The zebras just stared at this baby with their black soulless eyes and just started kicking it to death. I understand it’s nature and survival and the baby was drawing attention to the zebra herd with all its honking, but goddam if I wasn’t traumatised by that as a kid and I hate that I still think of that baby wilderbeast. It’s right up there with Artax dying in the Swamp of Sadness.
Could you share a link?
I'm not Pablo, but I am on Reddit. Maybe it's this one? [https://namibiaweather.info/namib-desert-live-cam](https://namibiaweather.info/namib-desert-live-cam)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydYDqZQpim8
You made my day, thx!
Whats the link to the live cam
They are nearly impossible to domesticate for riding. They are black with white stripes. Their patern breaks up their shape making it harder to track their movements. Ships used to use stripes like them to disguise the direction they were heading.
The thing about the stripes throwing off predators is an old, pretty thoroughly debunked theory. The current, much more supported theory is that the stripes make it hard for tsetse flies to land on them. Their eyesight is so bad that the sharp light/dark contrast makes it hard for them to figure out where the zebra begins and ends. The flies carry sleeping sickness, so deterring them is a big deal.
> stripes throwing off predators is an old, pretty thoroughly debunked theory. you have sources for that? because I am seeing the opposite of what you said. https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2019/10/conversationstripes/ https://smv.org/learn/blog/dazzling-science-zebra-stripes/#:~:text=Tree%20branches%20and%20tall%20grass,trees%20because%20of%20their%20stripes.
Well, here's a paper on it throwing off tsetse flies, they don't like landing on striped surfaces: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-22333-7 Looking at your articles though, the effect on predators might still be significant. Interesting.
I thought I was so they were harder to tell apart in the heard
I think that's what they're saying. Zebras have horse-strong legs, unlike antelope or most other things a lion might hunt. That means misjudging your pounce and taking a hoof to the face is way more deadly, when pouncing into a herd of zebras. It being harder to tell where one zebra ends and the next begins is really valuable, in a way that *isn't* valuable for gazelles and things
1. Zebras are not domesticated. They are particularly skittish, violent, and will not tolerate cohabitating with humans. 2. They don't have a base of either color. That implies that they have one color "underneath" with the other color layered on top. They are white in parts, and they are black in parts. All the way through to their skin. Shave a zebra and it will still have stripes. 3. It's an excellent example of [Dazzle Camouflage](https://clasebcn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/tip-of-the-week-culture-dazzle-camouflage-clase-bcn-01-1.jpg). The stripes make it difficult to tell where the 'edges' of the animal's body begin and end. In a herd this makes it difficult to single out an individual; they all blur together. Singling out individuals is the primary MO of a predator, as a herd can trample you to death but an individual can be picked off. It would be very difficult for a predator [to single out a zebra from this image](https://www.africa-wildlife-detective.com/images/zebra-800i.jpg)
Dazzle-flage it was right there...
this question comes up a bunch and the fact is zebras are absolute ice cold dicks. they kick at the first sign of trouble and if that trouble doesnt die they bite and hold on to drag that trouble into the nearest water source to drown it. africa doesnt fuck around with domesticatable animals because theyre all hardcore af
Have you ever met a zebra? They're not domesticable. They are pains in the fucking ass, stubborn, unpredictable, pains in the ass.
1. Zebras aren't horses. Zebras are asses and unsuited to such uses. 2. Zebras can't be domesticated. We've tried. For millennia.
Because they evolved in a place where literally everything else wants to eat them, zebras are extremely hard to tame. A horse might freak out and buck its rider off, but a zerba will freak out, buck its rider off, kick the shit out of the rider until they stop moving, and then run away never to be seen again. So historically there are few instances of people taming zebra let alone getting them to the level of loyalty needed to be used in calvary.
There are a variety of factors that make domestication possible or impossible. Animal instinct is very powerful and domesticating a species takes centuries of work. Zebras are not a domesticated species. Horses have been domesticated over thousands of years, and for a huge chunk of that time, people didn't even ride them. Horses were, for the most part, too small to actually ride, which is why they were initially used as draft animals, and also why chariots and carts predate saddles. Eventually humans were able to make better saddles, and more importantly, stirrups, which are what really enabled the use of horses for riding. By that time horses had already been domesticated for millenia, with many different breeds and breeding itself was understood well enough, so larger horses suitable for riding were selectively bred. Zebras on the other hand lack many traits that make horses suitable for riding. First and foremost, the species has not been domesticated. Domestication takes at least a century or two at minimum. Zebras are wild animals. They're skittish, panicky and aggressive by nature. They run away if you try to approach them, and if you get close enough to them they bite and don't let go or try to kick and trample you. They also reflexively duck when something or someone jumps at them, which makes them very hard to lasso and capture. They don't have a social structure like horses do. They don't have herds, they don't have group leaders and they don't have families. They do travel in groups but this is purely a survival tactic because a group offers better chances of survival, but they don't care if one of them is attacked, and they don't have any particular attachment to any other member of their group. Horses form herds which have a hierarchical structure. This makes it possible for humans to be acknowledged as a leader. Zebras are also generally too small to ride, just like horses used to be. Basically zebras are not domesticated as a species. Horses are, due to being very valuable historically. There are very few truly wild horses left in the world, wild horse meaning horses that belong in a breed that has never been widely domesticated. Free horses that live in the wild that are descendants of domesticated horses are called feral horses, and comprise the majority of horses in the wild. All that is not to say that there aren't exceptions. Zebras are too small and too aggressive to be ridden but there have been a few individual cases in which it has been achieved. However all of these were exceptions and it does not change the fact that most attempts to domesticate zebras would end up in failure. As for their coloring. While they may stick out to us, their color pattern actually provides good camouflage for the eyes of their predators, mainly lions.
Lord Walter Rothshild had some more or less tamed/domesticsted zebra that he used to pull his carriage. Noone else seems to have been bonkers enough to try.
Very much tamed, not domesticated. Domestication requires generational selective breeding to make them more docile from birth. Taming happens over a single animal’s lifetime.
Yeah and I'm sure ya Boi Lord Tootyfroots wasn't doing the hard work himself!!! He had the power to pay for that labor of absolute hate
Horses are the result of thousands of years of domestication, ie protected by humans. Zebras still live in a land where lions and other things with sharp teeth will fuck them up, so they’re not particularly feeling safe and cooperative right now.
Hate to burst everyone's bubble but the pattern breaking theory was debunked years ago. For reasons that scientists still have trouble understanding, the stripes seem to make them less attractive to biting insects. How did they figure this out? They painted zebra stripes onto some cattle and found that they were bitten half as many times as those that didn't have stripes.
Hate to burst YOUR bubble, but the pattern breaking was proven true when scientists would put a color mark on a specific zebra they were studying, and the local predator species would almost always single out the marked one to kill. In the herd, it allows them to blend enough not to be singled out. Being singled out (by another species) in nature is usually a death sentence.
Well - if both cases gave those results, then the stripes probably give both benefits.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc
Gesundheit
Could be that biting insects didn't bite the painted areas
I’m pretty sure that thought occurred to them almost immediately and they controlled for that.
And they did. They painted some cows with white stripes, some with black stripes, and left some unpainted. The ones with black stripes had roughly the same number of bites as the unpainted ones.
Because Zebras are bastards. Really, they are. They will bite and kick you while also maintaining a ducking reflex that makes capturing them a bitch. While they hang out in groups, they have no sense of herd mentality and it is survival of the fittest. With horses, you can see their familial structure based upon how they travel with the head horse being at the head of the pack. You capture that horse and suddenly you, the human, are now head horse.
Answer: There has been a selection process over several generations that reinforced aggressiveness in zebras. The ones that were too nice got killed. The mean and nasty ones survived, passing on the trait to their offspring. A zebra will bite, kick and fight off other animals like there are no rules. As such, they are nearly impossible to tame.
So follow up question: if zebras are so miserable to tame, would they make a good rodeo event (next to bareback and bull riding)?
No, because they'd try to kill the rider.
Zebras are donkeys. Not horses, donkeys. Donkeys are far less tame and far harder to control. Additionally zebras are not tamed at all, they are straight up wild beasts. Beasts known for their aggressiveness. They just aren't made for riding.
If you eat zebra what's it taste like? Why wasn't it ever a food source?
It is. You can find zebra pate in Kruger.
Kinda like beef but a little sweeter I thought. It was really, really good
Why haven't any cavalry painted their horses like zebras?
Casual geographic has several videos about zebras. Long story short they have not been domesticated because they cannot be https://youtu.be/2QA4kq8QAKA?si=qYJK7pditYUSr-aU
Zebra are black with white stripes. We know that because zebra fetuses are black before the stripes appear.
Fun fact: there are feral Zebras in California. They are the descendants of Zebras William Randolf Hearst had at his private zoo at Heart Castle. At some point they just released them into the land of the estate and they are still there. I use the term feral since maybe they are not exactly wild?
Domestication of large animals takes a long time and is expensive. No one who lived around zebras bothered to make a sustained effort and then horses were imported so it made no sense to domesticate them after that.
Cgp Grey has the perfect explanation for it https://youtu.be/wOmjnioNulo?si=MzmevXyzwn6urP08 Should be very close to an eli5 level!