Why haven't people saddled the zebra?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The endless savannah, thousands of herds of striped white-black ungulates that rush along it into the distance in search of food and water. Usually people do not think about the curious fact that the horse and the zebra are direct relatives. When a person realizes this, then very soon a simple but interesting question creeps into his head: why did not humanity tame the zebra just like a horse and does not use it to move and transport objects?

When European colonialists came to Africa, they began to take out from there not only black local residents as slaves and numerous resources.

The Europeans also liked the local horses. An obvious relative of this species, the zebra, aroused their interest. The animal seemed to be a promising commodity as a new sled and draft cattle for agriculture, industry and the army. Moreover, zebras were resistant to many diseases, including those carried by the tsetse fly.

However, the newcomer European enslavers and robbers did not succeed in this field, just as nothing in the "relationship" with zebras did not work for the local residents for many centuries.

To begin with, not every living creature can be domesticated. A wild beast must meet a whole set of criteria. Only with more or less full compliance with them, the animal can be domesticated.

Actually, all the species that were suitable for this - from a dog to an elephant, have already been domesticated by man throughout his thousand-year history.

The most important criteria include the following: the presence of a social structure in the species, an agreeable character, not picky about food, and most importantly, the animal must be able to reproduce in captivity. Many wild animals categorically refuse to do this even in zoos with imitation of a wild environment, let alone a farm

Zebra itself is not suitable for domestication for a number of factors. First, she's not even obstinate. It would be more appropriate to say that the zebra is sick in the whole head, relative to the horses we are accustomed to.

This is because, unlike horses, zebras live in a much more dangerous environment and are constantly faced with very harsh predators. Suffice it to say that a cornered zebra is capable of hammering a not-too-strong lion with its hooves.

Secondly, zebras are much more panicky about horses and are almost not amenable to training. All this is strongly related to the fact that zebras do not have a social structure as such. These animals huddle in herds, but they have no leaders. And therefore, a person is not able to take this place for a zebra during preparation and operation.

Thirdly, the zebra does not pass the physical examination! The animal does not reproduce very well in confinement and almost never reproduces in a farm environment.

And most importantly, the back of a zebra is very different in its own way from that of a horse, which does not allow it to be widely used as a riding animal. Do not forget that even the strongest zebra is weaker and smaller than most horses.

Although, of course, there were attempts to tame the zebra. True, in the end they ended in nothing.