49 Fun Facts About Zebra

Which comedian voices Marty, the zebra who longs to leave the Central Park Zoo, in the Madagascar films?

Chris Rock's Marty sets the whole story going: bored on his tenth birthday, he slips out of the zoo to find the wild, and his friends' attempt to fetch him back gets them all shipped out to sea.

Zebras belong to the odd-toed hoofed mammals, along with horses, tapirs and which other animals?

Rhinos walk on three toes and a zebra on a single one, and in both the weight centres on the middle toe. Even-toed animals such as camels and pigs share the load between two.

What colour is a zebra's skin under its coat?

The coat looks white with black stripes because unstriped areas like the belly are white, but the skin itself is black.

Which explanation for zebra stripes was backed by a 2019 experiment that dressed horses in striped coats?

They deter biting flies: horseflies approached striped and plain coats alike, but failed to slow down in time to land on the stripes, so far fewer settled.

What colour are zebra foals' stripes at birth?

Brown and white is how a foal starts out, in soft, fuzzy fur. The brown stripes darken as it grows.

The ancient Greeks and Romans named the zebra after which two animals?

Horse and tiger made the Greek 'hippotigris', and the word is still in use: Hippotigris is the scientific name of the subgenus that holds the living zebras.

Which animal named for the zebra has invaded the Great Lakes since the 1980s?

Zebra mussels probably crossed the Atlantic in ships' ballast water, and power plants now spend heavily clearing their striped shells out of clogged water intakes.

In the Allied radio alphabet of World War II, 'Zebra' stood for Z; which word replaced it in today's NATO alphabet?

Zulu came in with a 1951 civil aviation alphabet built from sounds common to English, French and Spanish, and reached the military when NATO adopted its own version in 1956.

The genus Equus arose on which continent, where its horses later died out?

North America is where the horse family grew up. Some of its members spread to the Old World, and the branch that settled in Africa became the zebras.

What is a cross between a zebra and a horse called?

A zonkey has a donkey parent and a zoni a pony; zebroids are often born sterile and dwarfed.

In medical slang, a 'zebra' is what kind of diagnosis?

A rare one: students learn that hoofbeats usually mean horses, so common illnesses come first. People with the rare Ehlers-Danlos syndromes have adopted the zebra as their emblem, because sometimes it really is one.

Which naturalist wrote in 1871 that a female zebra would accept a male ass only once he was painted with stripes?

Charles Darwin borrowed the story from the surgeon John Hunter for The Descent of Man, as evidence that animals choose their mates by appearance.

To test whether stripes keep zebras cool, a 2018 experiment wrapped what in zebra hides and left them in the sun?

Water-filled metal barrels stood in for zebra bodies. After four months outdoors, those in striped hides had warmed just as much inside as plain grey ones, so the stripes did no cooling.

The logic puzzle known as the Zebra Puzzle, which ends by asking who owns the zebra, is popularly credited to which scientist?

Albert Einstein is said to have set it as a boy, but there is no evidence that he did. A well-known version ran in Life International in 1962, which printed the names of several hundred readers who solved it.

How long can a Grévy's zebra survive without water?

Almost a week is the upper estimate, and five days by other counts, which suits the dry scrub of Kenya and Ethiopia. Given the chance, though, a Grévy's zebra still drinks every day.

As 'pioneer grazers', zebras mow down tall, tough grass and so open up the short, rich growth beneath for which animals?

Wildebeest need the short, leafy grass that the zebras uncover. A zebra's simpler gut gets less from each mouthful, so it copes with the coarse stems on top by eating far more of them.

Which predator hunts zebras most?

Lions are the zebra's main predator. A zebra can land a kick hard enough to injure one, but once caught it rarely fights its way free.

How do zebras escape predators that can outrun them?

By sideways turning when the cat is close behind, a zebra uses its one edge: a 2018 tracking study found that at the lower speeds of a real chase, prey can turn as sharply as their bodies allow.

What is the stable family group of most zebra species called?

A harem is one stallion with several mares and their foals, and it outlasts him: when a new stallion takes over, the mares stay together as a group.

When a plains zebra family travels, who leads?

The top-ranking mare and her foals walk in front and the other mares follow by rank. The stallion brings up the rear, where he can turn and face whatever is chasing the family.

How do male Grévy's zebras mark their large territories?

With dung piles: the most dominant stallions stake out the ground around waterholes, which every mare with a young foal has to visit.

What can a zebra foal do within an hour of its birth?

Run it must: the herd keeps moving to find food and water, and a mother cannot leave her newborn behind.

How does a zebra mare make sure her newborn learns her stripe pattern?

She keeps other zebras away for a short time after the birth. Once the foal can tell its mother by her stripes, the two go back to the group.

Where do young Grévy's zebras stay while their mothers go to drink?

In 'kindergartens' minded by the local male, foals wait out the long walk to water. He guards even those that are not his, because it keeps their mothers in his territory.

Which striped-legged forest animal, sometimes called the zebra giraffe, is the giraffe's only close living relative?

Okapi stripes are thought to help a calf follow its mother through the dark rainforest, while the long, dark tongue and the male's skin-covered horns give away the giraffe kinship.

The plains zebra is the national animal of which southern African country?

Botswana chose the zebra because no tribe claimed it as a symbol and because its two-tone coat echoes the flag's message of racial harmony. Two zebras hold up the national coat of arms.

Sheena, the comic-book heroine depicted riding a zebra, was created as a female version of which hero?

Tarzan was the model, but no apes raised Sheena: in her original story she came to Africa as an explorer's young daughter and was brought up by the witch doctor who had accidentally killed him.

Which actor voices Stripes, the zebra who dreams of racing thoroughbreds, in the 2005 film Racing Stripes?

Frankie Muniz's Stripes is a circus foal left behind in a thunderstorm and raised on a Kentucky farm beside a racetrack, where he grows up convinced that he is a racehorse.

Carel Weight's painting of a zebra escaping a zoo during an air raid was based on a real incident at which zoo?

London Zoo's zebra house was hit by bombs in September 1940 and a zebra bolted. Weight painted the chase as four comic-strip panels, which the war artists' committee bought.

In the early 1400s, zebras from the Somali coast were presented to the emperor of which country?

China's Ming court received them as tribute along with ostriches, giraffes and other exotic beasts, all brought home by the treasure fleets of the admiral Zheng He, and the arrivals caused a sensation.

A zebra given to George III's wife in 1762 was nicknamed what by satirists?

'The Queen's Ass' was the talk of the town: crowds came to stare at it in its paddock at Buckingham House, now the palace, and George Stubbs painted its portrait.

Grévy's zebra is named after a president of which country?

France's president Jules Grévy was sent one in 1882 by the ruler of Abyssinia, now Ethiopia. A French zoologist saw that it was unlike any zebra then known and named the species after him.

Which zoologist trained zebras to pull a carriage and drove it to Buckingham Palace?

Walter Rothschild, heir to the banking family, kept zebras, emus and kangaroos at Tring Park and drove his zebra team through the capital's streets to show that the animals could be tamed.

In which Mexican border city have burros painted with zebra stripes posed with tourists for souvenir photos since the 1940s?

Tijuana's cart owners striped their pale burros so that they would stand out in the monochrome snapshots of the day, and the 'zonkey' became a symbol of the city.

As of 2019, how did the IUCN Red List classify Grévy's zebra?

Endangered: Grévy's zebra has lost more of its range than almost any other African mammal, and only about 2,000 adults remain, nearly all of them in northern Kenya.

On their yearly trek from Tanzania's Serengeti into Kenya, zebras must swim which river, where crocodiles lie in wait?

The Mara lies across the herds' route to Kenya's fresh grass, so from July they plunge in by the thousand. Zebras usually travel at the front of the migration.

The name of the quagga, a half-striped zebra of the Cape, is said to imitate what?

Its own cry, which early travellers said the name copied exactly. Dictionaries trace the word through Afrikaans to a Khoikhoi name and keep the 'said to be'.

The last known quagga died in 1883 in which European capital, whose settlers had hunted it in the Cape?

Amsterdam's zoo did not know its quagga was the last of its kind. People in the Cape called every zebra a quagga, which may be why nobody noticed the real ones had gone.

The quagga holds what distinction in genetics, achieved in 1984?

First extinct animal to have its DNA analysed: dried muscle from a museum specimen gave up readable sequences, showing that DNA can survive in the remains of a vanished species.

How is the Quagga Project reviving the quagga's coat?

Selective breeding is the method: the project pairs plains zebras with the faintest stripes, and over the generations their foals have shown fewer stripes and, lately, a browner coat.

Which country set up Mountain Zebra National Park in 1937 to save a dwindling subspecies?

South Africa's park gave the Cape mountain zebra a refuge after hunting had driven it close to extinction, and under protection its numbers have since multiplied many times over.

The world's first official zebra crossing was introduced in 1951 in which town just west of London?

Slough's crossing came out of government tests on how to make crossings easier for drivers to see, in which broad, bold stripes stood out best.

How does a zebra family guard against ambush while it sleeps at night?

One stays on watch, and that lets the rest of the family lie down on the ground to sleep.

In American football slang, which people on the field are called 'zebras'?

The officials earn the name from their striped shirts, which date from the 1920s: a quarterback had taken a referee dressed in white for a teammate and sent the ball his way.

A zebra drawn on stone some 30,000 years ago was found in a Namibian cave named after which space mission?

Apollo 11 had just come home from the Moon when the German archaeologist Wolfgang Wendt was digging there, so he gave the rock shelter its name. Its painted slabs are among the oldest pictures in Africa.

Which Italian football club is nicknamed 'Le Zebre', the Zebras, after its striped shirts?

Juventus owes its stripes to Nottingham: when the club's pink shirts kept fading in the wash, replacements were ordered from there, and what arrived was the kit of Notts County.

What may explain why zebras, unlike horses, were never domesticated?

Aggression bred by Africa's many predators, early humans among them, is the usual answer. A zebra that bites tends not to let go, so single animals have been trained but none bred into docile herds.

The Illinois company Zebra Technologies is best known for making printers and scanners for what?

Barcodes, the striped labels on almost every parcel and product, are its trade. The firm took the name Zebra in 1986, four years after it turned to making label printers.

Which feature on its throat sets the mountain zebra apart from the other two zebra species?

A dewlap, a fold of skin that looks a little like an Adam's apple, hangs from its throat. True to its name, this zebra lives on rocky slopes, which it climbs on hard, compact hooves.