Zebras are also horses, why doesn't anyone ride them?
Don't look at the zebra called a zebra, in fact, it is not a horse, just a relative of the horse. They all belong to the family Equinaceae, and then they are divided into equine, donkey and zebra.
Somewhat similar to the relationship between foxes and dogs, they belong to the same family of canines, and then branch into the subfamily fox and subfamily canines.
So from that point of view, a zebra is not a horse.
Precious information on the taming of zebras by humans.
Lionel Walter Rothschild, the elder brother born in 1868, came from the Rothschild family.
That's right, it's the financial giant Rothschild, (there's a book called "Currency Wars" that describes the Rothschilds as gods who secretly control the entire human society...). ）
The older brother may not be the richest of the Rothschilds, but he must be the most able to work.
Walter was not at all interested in the family's traditional business, the bank, what was he interested in?
It's animals.
So he went to Cambridge University to study zoology, and finally when he was 21 years old, his arm could not be twisted and his thighs were twisted, and he was arranged by his family to return to his own Rothschild Bank.
This work is nearly twenty years, and finally when he was nearly 40 years old, he was successfully abandoned by his parents and found that he was not the material for finance after all.
So as compensation, his parents built him an animal museum. And he paid for the elderly brother's need to hire animal hunters and herbarists around the world to pay for his animal collecting habits.
So it hired 400 people to collect animal specimens for it all over the world.
Walter Rothschild successfully opened his museum in 1892. And with his perseverance (and the hard work of 400 employees), he owns one of the largest collections of natural history in the world and is open to the public.
What does this collection include?
Walter's private collection includes 300,000 bird skins, 200,000 bird eggs, 2,250,000 butterflies and 30,000 beetles, as well as thousands of specimens of mammals, reptiles and fish.
They form the largest zoological collection ever in a private collection.
Also in 1932, after being blackmailed by his former mistress, Walter was forced to sell most of his bird collection to the American Museum of Natural History....
Upon his death five years later, in 1937, in his will he gave the remaining collection to the British Museum, which was later spun off from the Natural History Museum in London, and his collection became the greatest collection the institution received.
The following includes, but is not limited to, Walter Rothschild's work:
- Rothyd's giraffe, also known as the Ugandan giraffe, is one of the subspecies of giraffes. It has a unique pattern, the calves are white and have no lines, as if wearing white silk, and the name is also named after The Rothschilds.
- After visiting Hungary in 1902, Rothschild brought six live sleeping rats (Glis glis) back to the Trane region of England. As a result, some of them escaped and successfully caused a local biological invasion, and there are currently about 10,000 sleeping mice in Trane
- Trying to ride an adult Aldabra tortoise in England (and did), and trying to lure it forward with a stick to hoist the lettuce, in order to bring as many tortoises back as possible, The Walter Prince directly leased the origin of Aldabra Atoll for ten years.
- Ride a carriage with four zebras to Buckingham Palace as an attempt to prove that zebras can be tamed
Victorians believed that zebras were incurable wild animals, resistant to being tamed and used by humans,
Walter didn't think so, and to prove it, he drove a carriage by a group of zebras to Buckingham Palace, and thus this world-famous painting was available.
But after generations of zebra enthusiasts have tried, it has been found that zebras are indeed not suitable for riding,
It's too small, and the back isn't suitable for long-term camels,
In addition, it bites people without letting go of its mouth, and also has a one-step to stomach kick (used to defend against predators such as lions on the savannah)
This all leads to the fact that they are still more dangerous for people.
As a result, riding a zebra can only become a whole life.
Zebras, which mainly live in the African plains, are not so easy to catch first, of course, it is not so easy to capture horses and donkeys, but the horses and donkeys are more widely distributed, the types of locations are more, and the chance of being caught is greater; The second is that even if zebras were captured in The African region, there was no need to use them at that time. Unlike horses and donkeys, they were used and quickly entered the role of farming, transportation, or war.
Coupled with a strong vigilance against humans themselves, it is difficult to get close to zebras in the wild.
According to the naturalist Francis Galton, domesticated animals must meet these criteria: they crave a comfortable environment, are easy to care for, and are actively close to humans. In summary, zebras are not a "human-friendly" animal and do not meet the criteria for domestication.
It's not that humans don't want to ride zebras, it's that they can't ride this wild animal...