Status:  Vulnerable

Zebras have very different temperaments to horses. They’re far more aggressive and a lot more dangerous. Adorable as they are, ebras have been known to kick each other to death, they will viciously bite any human that comes too close, and there are even many accounts of zebras killing lions.

All this only made the zebra more desirable to colonials who wanted to display their power and wealth.

Jumping an obstacle: riding a zebra in East Africa, about 1900, Carpenter, Frank G., 1855-1924

Lionel Walter Rothschild (1868-1937), 2nd Baron Rothschild, with his famed zebra carriage, which he frequently drove through London

I had never heard of the “mountain zebra” (Equus zebra) which is the most common zebra of southwest Africa, meaning they have adapted well to the mountains, heat and drought of the region.  The Hartmann’s Mountain Zebras are good climbers and live in hot, dry, rocky, mountainous and hilly habitats. They prefer slopes and plateaus as high as 1,000 m (3,300 ft) above sea level, although they do migrate lower during winter. Their preferred diet is tufted grass, but in times of shortage, they browse, eating bark, twigs, leaves, buds, fruit, and roots.  We saw them on a hilltop in southern Namibia.

There are lots of propositions for the eternal question of how zebras got their stripes, but the previously unrecorded ability of zebras to erect their black stripes was discovered by comparing the temperatures of living zebras to a zebra’s hide. The latter got hotter than the former by as much as 16°C/29°F. The suggestion is that the raising of black hairs transfers heat from the skin to the hair surface.

There is no denying the zebra is dazzling, so it is not surprising a group of them has been classified as a “dazzle.”  Each animal, but even more so in numbers, look like a piece of modern art.  These are some of the savannah zebras we saw in Etosha.

They look even better as the sun goes down.

Best,

Jan