Zebras are more than just striped members of the horse family. Some are rugged mountaineers, some have spots instead of stripes, and some of them bark like dogs.
Every zebra has a unique pattern of stripes. And scientists can use the patterns like bar codes to identify individuals in a herd and keep track of them over time.
For decades and decades, scientists have wondered why zebras have stripes. One prevailing theory held that the stripes confused predators, making it harder for, say, a lion to pick out an individual zebra from a stampeding herd.
Each species of zebra has different types of stripes, varying in width and pattern distribution. Curiously, the farther south on the African plains the zebra lives, the father apart its stripes will be.
Zebra, any of three species of strikingly black-and-white striped mammals of the horse family Equidae the plains zebra, which is found in rich grasslands over much of eastern and southern Africa; Grevy’s zebra, which lives in arid, sparsely wooded areas in Kenya and a few small areas in Ethiopia; and the mountain zebra, which inhabits dry upland plains in Namibia and a few scattered areas in western South Africa. The plains zebra is made up of six subspecies. The mountain zebra is made up of two subspecies.
