Zebras were not domesticated in ancient times, and in modern times Europeans tried to domesticate zebras, but failed.
Domestication is a long process, not overnight, and requires generations of breeding to turn wild animals into poultry and livestock. The area where the domestication of wild animals began was the area where the earliest civilizations were born, and the civilization of the African continent where zebras survived was very slow. In addition to the splendid ancient Egyptian civilization in North Africa, there are few highly developed ancient civilizations in sub-Saharan Africa, and primitive tribes that slash and burn do not need domestic animals or warhorses, so ancient African natives have not domesticated zebras.
Horses were domesticated by early nomadic tribes in the Eurasian steppes about 6,000 years ago, and the earliest sites of horse domestication were found in the Ukrainian steppes. The ancestor of the domestic horse is the European wild horse, also known as the Taiban wild horse, which was once widely distributed in the temperate steppes of the central and western Eurasian continents. The last wild European wild horse died in Ukraine in 1876, and the last thoroughbred European wild horse died in a Russian zoo in 1909.
Later, some people tried to resurrect the European wild horses, breeding some horse breeds that looked very similar to the European wild horses, such as the Heiko horse and the Konik Polish pony, but they were also paradoxical.
Although the European wild horse has disappeared, its domesticated species, also known as the domestic horse, is known as "the most contributed domestic animal to mankind", the position of the horse in ancient times is irreplaceable, the civilization process without horse humans will become very slow, and the horse has become an incomparably important symbol of civilization.
Zebras do not have much advantage over domestic horses that have been selected by humans for a long time.
<h1>Zebra body type</h1>
Horses belong to the order Chithus, and there are only three families in the order Chickaceae - Equine, Rhinoceros, and Tapir, with a total of 17 species, of which 8 are in the equine family.
Map of the distribution of wild horses
They are common zebra, mountain zebra, fine-striped zebra, African wild donkey (ancestor of domestic donkey), Asian wild donkey, Tibetan wild donkey, Przewalski's wild horse, and domestic horse. The first three are what we often call zebras, and the patterns on these three zebras are very different, and the body size is also different.
Ordinary zebras, also known as plain zebras, have a shoulder height of 1.27-1.4 meters and a weight of 175-320 kg. It is the most numerous and widely distributed zebra, distributed in East and South Africa, with about 500,000 horses.
Mountain zebra, shoulder height 1.2-1.5 meters, weight 240-380 kg. Distributed in southern Africa, the wild population is 25,000-30,000 horses.
The finely streaked zebra, the largest zebra, has a shoulder height of 1.4-1.6 meters and a weight of 350-450 kg. Distributed in Kenya and Ethiopia, only 2,500 remain.
Zebras range in shoulder height of 1.2-1.6 meters and weigh 175-450 kg. Compare some of the old breeds of domestic horses.
It can be seen that zebras are similar in size to most domestic horses, so it is not correct to say that "zebras are smaller than domestic horses". Zebras can reach a speed of up to 70 km / h, not slower than domestic horses, and zebras also have an advantage that domestic horses cannot match, that is, they are very resistant to tsetse flies.
Widely distributed on the sub-Saharan African continent, tsetse flies are the main carriers of animal trypanosomiasis and sleeping sickness. Modern Europeans entered Africa to open up, the livestock they brought from Europe could not resist the invasion of tsetse flies, nor could they adapt to the climate of Africa, no matter how high-quality good horses, after entering Africa, they would become sick and even die in batches. As an indigenous species, zebras are immune to diseases transmitted by tsetse flies, so Europeans tried to domesticate zebras as mounts, but also found many defects of zebras.
<h1>The zebra's character is the biggest obstacle to domestication</h1>
When Friedrich Selous came to Africa in 1871, he wrote about his experiences in Africa in the book The Hunter's Wandering, which was a bestseller in England and sparked a frenzy of Europeans domesticating African animals.
In 1891 the German Hines captured a male zebra and rode it for two days. In 1907, a doctor in Nairobi, Kenya, Rosendo Ribeiro, rode out on a zebra. In the mid-19th century, George Gray transported his zebras from South Africa to Cavaeu Island, New Zealand, to be used to pull carts.
Among the many attempts to domesticate zebras, the most famous and successful was the British banker and politician, as well as the eccentric zoologist, the second generation of Rothschild Barons, Walter Rothschild.
He spent a lot of effort training zebras and eventually arrived at Buckingham Palace in 6 zebra-ridden cars to prove to people that zebras can be tamed. But this is only taming, far from domestication.
Rothschild also found two problems that made him feel that zebras were not suitable for riding.
First of all, the zebra's body is not as strong as the domestic horse, and the endurance is poor, and it cannot carry heavy loads for long distances, which is the most suitable for pulling the car. Secondly, zebras are difficult to tame, which is the biggest obstacle to domesticating zebras. The zebra is called a horse and looks like a horse, but genetically closer to a donkey, but it has a worse temper than a donkey.
A zebra is a social animal, a dozen small, hundreds more, the group is led by a strong male (oyster horse), a group of females (mu horses) and foals follow the male, the female horse also has a rank, the strongest walk in front, the weak walk behind, the position of the foal and the mother's status are consistent. In case of danger, the leading male horse will stand up to protect the group. When the male horses fight with each other, in addition to kicking and kicking, they will also bite each other with their mouths.
Zebras can also use their hind legs to kick and kick predators, and zebras can lift their two hind legs side by side and vigorously lift them to give a heavy blow to the carnivores chasing them in the rear, causing serious injuries to the head of the carnivores and kicking their jaws so that they cannot eat and starve to death.
From the records available, zebras have killed lionesses and cheetahs, kicked and injured male lions, and even bit lions and spotted hyenas with their mouths. Zebras treat their peers more harshly, with adult male zebras killing non-biological zebra cubs, kicking them to death or biting their heads and drowning in the water.
In Zimbabwe in the 1980s, a group of zebras was captured, 16 of which were loaded into a truck and transported away, and when they arrived at their destination, they were surprised to find that only one survived and the others were dying in each other's trampling, because zebras were easily frightened, and fear spread in the group.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Service tried to domesticate zebras as animal power, but eventually the project was shelved because domesticating zebras would require quickly grinding out their temper, and to achieve this goal would be tantamount to abuse.
<h1>Can zebras be domesticated? </h1>
Zebras are social herbivores that have a basis for domestication, but domestication is a long process that requires thousands or even thousands of years of generational breeding, and finally the animal breeding process is completely controlled by humans, and different breeds are created according to human needs.
Shea Inman, a teenage girl in Virginia, bought a zebra and trained it to ride. She patiently uses various gentle ways to make the zebra obedient, indicating that the zebra may be an animal that "eats soft and not hard", or that the zebra she bought has a better temperament.
So domesticating zebras requires patience.
Each zebra has a different personality, so we grab a large group of zebras, select the more docile individuals from them, let them reproduce the next generation, and then select the docile individuals from the next generation, so that the bad temper of the zebra can be gradually improved over several generations. If you want to breed large zebras, then pick strong individuals, but strong zebras and docile zebras may not be the same batch, which is a bit troublesome, but as long as you pick a few more generations, you can solve it.
In modern times, those people are too eager to make quick gains, so they fail, but they are wise and do not spend a lot of time and money on breeding spots, because it is meaningless. Even if a zebra is domesticated, its role is not as good as that of a domestic horse that has been bred for thousands of years.
If zebras had lived in Eurasia, they might have been domesticated by humans thousands of years ago.
To summarize the reasons why humans did not domesticate zebras.
1, zebras are mainly distributed in sub-Saharan Africa, where civilization started late, the development is slow, there is no need to domesticate zebras.
2, zebras are short-tempered, the cost of domestication is high, in modern times people have tried but failed.
3, domestication is a long process, in modern times to domesticate zebras has been too late, and there is no need.