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Showing posts with the label George Grey

Why can't we ride zebras?

It seems like an obvious question: if we can ride horses, why not zebras?  After all, the two animals look similar, and no doubt split somewhat recently in evolutionary history.  Zebras are on average slightly smaller than horses, but they’re larger than ponies, and the pony was domesticated long ago.  Horses and ponies, indigenous to Asia, were first domesticated there by the humans who wandered there from Africa.  For much longer, humans and zebras have inhabited southern Africa together, living in the same region since the existence of the modern human beings.  In fact, zebras have been around longer than human beings have.  Africans never domesticated the animal, which they would no doubt have found plenty of use for, if they had. So why didn’t they figure out how to ride it?  Did it just never occur to anyone there to try?  Maybe it didn’t, but the more likely explanation is that zebras just aren’t as easy to climb up on as horses are.  In fact, they’re pretty mean.  Like horse