Page 39 - Fourways Gardens March 2021

Nature

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.
Panic Dam (looking through a window) illustrates how green everything is this year.
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.

One of the most pleasant calls in the bush
is the gentle ‘bark’ of the Burchell’s zebra.
Goss describes it as “Kwa-ha! Kwa-ha! Kwa
–ha-ha-ha!”

That’s how the name quagga arose. It was
Above: Each zebra’s patterning is unique
and that predators viewing a herd cannot - like human fingerprints the word the Hottentots used for the now-
sort out an individual to attack. Can that extinct quagga that had stripes only on
be true? If so, how is it that zebras rate so Below: A foal knows its mother by her its forequarters. Kwagga was the favoured
highly on the lion’s menu? stripes Afrikaans word for zebra for many years.

A more popular theory is that pests such
as biting insects are put off by the stripes.
Another is that it helps them control their
temperature.

What also puzzles people is why, even in
times of drought when grazing is difficult
to find, zebras remain so fat. In fact, they
all look positively pregnant – including 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

Fourways Gardens • 37 • March 2021