Page 12 - Dainfern Precinct Living 2 2021
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NATURE
like human fingerprints. Science four-legged animals have developed such as biting insects are put off by
has established that zebras are, cryptically-coloured hides? One the stripes. Another is that it helps
basically, white animals with black suggestion is that the stripes break them control their temperature.
stripes and not the other way up the animal’s image and that
around. And they can raise the hairs predators viewing a herd cannot sort What also puzzles people is why,
along the black stripes but not the out an individual to attack. Can that even in times of drought when
white hairs in between. be true? If so, how is it that zebras grazing is difficult to find, zebras
rate so highly on the lion’s menu? remain so fat. In fact, they all look
But why would evolution have left positively pregnant – including
them so vividly striped when all other A more popular theory is that pests the males. This is because their
intestines are inflated by gas – gas
created by bacteria that thrive on
the half-digested grass that passes
along the zebra’s gut. Without
these bacteria, zebras would starve
to death, for the microbes break
down the fodder making the
nutrients available to be digested.
It’s what is known as a symbiotic
relationship.
The zebra’s jaws and dental battery
are formidable. I recall a zebra stuck
in a deep mudhole. Its would-be
rescuers were trying to throw a loop
around its neck but the zebra foiled
the plan by catching the rope in its
teeth and refusing to let go. The
rescuers then found they were able
to drag the animal clear merely by its
teeth.
Zebras, in defending their young,
have been known to fight off lions
using their teeth and hooves and
are known to have bitten a hyena to
death.
I remember Hilda Stevenson-
Hamilton, widow of Colonel
Stevenson-Hamilton, the first warden
of Kruger Park. Her forearm was just
skin on bone – no flesh at all. She
had been bitten by her pet zebra. It
was not an affectionate bite!
Richard Goss who, in 1990, updated
and expanded C Astley-Maberly’s
Mammals of Southern Africa
mentioned the finding of a poacher’s
body “badly mutilated and disabled”.
From the spoor around the body it
appeared he had killed a foal and
was set upon by several zebras and
trampled and bitten to death.
Top: Each zebra’s One of the most pleasant calls in
patterning is unique - like the bush is the gentle ‘bark’ of the
human fingerprints. Burchell’s zebra. Goss describes it
Above: A foal knows its as “Kwa-ha! Kwa-ha! Kwa –ha-ha-
mother by her stripes. ha!”
Left: Panic Dam (looking That’s how the name quagga arose.
through a window) It was the word the Hottentots used
illustrates how green for the now-extinct quagga that had
everything is this year. stripes on its forequarters. Kwagga
was the favoured Afrikaans word for
zebra for many years.
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