Page 19 - The Villager April 2021

Nature

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.
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

Above: Each zebra’s patterning is unique - like human fingerprints zebra. goss describes it as “Kwa-ha! Kwa-
ha! Kwa –ha-ha-ha!”
four-legged animals have developed death, for the microbes break down the that’s how the name quagga arose.
cryptically-coloured hides? one fodder making the nutrients available It was the word the hottentots used for
suggestion is that the stripes break up to be digested. It’s what is known as a the now-extinct quagga that had stripes
the animal’s image and that predators symbiotic relationship. only on its forequarters. Kwagga was
viewing a herd cannot sort out an the zebra’s jaws and dental battery the favoured afrikaans word for zebra
individual to attack. Can that be true? If are formidable. I recall a zebra stuck in for many years.
so, how is it that zebras rate so highly on Below: A foal knows its mother by her stripes
the lion’s menu?
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

The Villager • Issue 4 2021 • 17