Southern Africa (and London)-2104: 54. Days 16-18 (Aug 31-Sep 2 )

The word zebra constitutes one of those words that epitomize the statement that is wrongfully attributed to Oscar Wilde and may not have been said by anyone of any note. The statement, “The Americans and the British are two peoples divided by a common language,” wasn’t said but what was said was the following: “We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.” In the case of the word zebra that difference is really quite small – they pronounce it with a short “e” and we pronounce it with a long “e” (although if we were to ask how it is spelled, they would start out by saying “zed”). But we’re talking about the same animal, or rather eight subspecies of the species “equus” which is the same species as the horse and the donkey. One distinction of the zebra is that it has never really been domesticated although both the horse and the donkey have been.

The zebra we see in South Africa is the Plains Zebra which is the most numerous subspecies. They are a very common herbivore and live in groups called harems consisting of one male, multiple females, and their young. An adult male will live either alone or with other males until it chooses to challenge a male at the head of a harem.

Now the most noted aspect of the zebra is, of course, the stripes. It is not true that you can tell the sex of a zebra by its stripes – the male having black body and white stripes and the female a white body and black stripes – or is it the other way? But our friends at Wikipedia do give us some interesting information about a zebra’s stripes:

It was previously believed that zebras were white animals with black stripes, since some zebras have white underbellies. Embryological evidence, however, shows that the animal's background color is black and the white stripes and bellies are additions. It is likely that the stripes are caused by a combination of factors as will be discussed below

The stripes are typically vertical on the head, neck, forequarters, and main body, with horizontal stripes at the rear and on the legs of the animal.

A wide variety of hypotheses have been proposed to account for the evolution of the striking stripes of zebras, although the truth is that we don’t know.

1. The vertical striping may help the zebra hide in the grass by disrupting its outline. In addition, even at moderate distances, the striking striping merges to an apparent grey.

2. The stripes may help to confuse predators by something called motion dazzle -- a group of zebras standing or moving close together may appear as one large mass of flickering stripes, making it more difficult for the lion to pick out a target.

3. The stripes may serve as visual cues and identification. Although the striping pattern is unique to each individual, it is not known whether zebras can recognize one another by their stripes.

4. Experiments by different researchers indicate that the stripes are effective in attracting fewer flies, including blood-sucking tsetse flies and tabbing horseflies.

5. Stripes may be used to cool the zebra. Air may move more quickly over black light-absorbing stripes while moving more slowly over white stripes. This would create convection currents around the zebra that would cool it. One study finds that zebras have more stripes in hotter habitats.

The zebra also appears on the coat of arms of the Republic of Botswana.

And now that you know much more about zebras than you did before(or perhaps than you cared to know), let’s look at some pictures. We’ll start with some groups of zebras – after all, they are herd animals.