zebras

zebras

Zebras are mammals, members of the same family of horses, equines, native to central and southern Africa. The coat of this animal is a set of color stripes contrasting with its background whole body and some black stripes arranged vertically, except the feet, where the horizontal. They are generally social animals living from small to large harem herds. Unlike their closest relatives, horses and donkeys, zebras have never been truly domesticated.

It is in the African savannah where zebras live. They are distributed by families: male, female and young. These animals, because they are usually attacked by lions, can become extremely fast animals, as to escape from predators, use the escape and its strong kicks and can break up the jaw of a cat. Zebra's stripes will darken with age, and these animals, although they may seem, they are not all equal.

There are three species of zebras: the zebra-of-plain, zebra-of-grevy and zebra-the-mountain. Zebra-the-plains and mountain zebra belong to the subgenus Hippotigris, but the zebra-of-grevy is the only species of the subgenus Dolichohippus. This latter resembles an ass, which is closely related, while the former two are more like horses .. All three belong to the genus Equus, along with other live horses.

They lie not on the verge of extinction, although the zebra-the-mountains is threatened. The subspecies of zebra-the-plains known as cuaga (quagga English, which means the sound that the animal produced cuahaa), Equus quagga quagga was extinct, but crossover projects between zebras with similar color have recovered the species before extinct, and the project successfully released several copies in nature.

Zebras are herbivorous animals, and if you feed preferably in the African savannah grasslands.

Taxonomy

Zebras evolved among the horses of the Old World in the last 4 million years. Zebras-of-grevy (and perhaps also zebras mountain-) are, along with donkeys and donkeys in a separate line of other zebra lines. This means that either striped equines have evolved more than once, or that the common ancestors of zebras and donkeys were striped zebras and only kept the stripes. Extensive stripes posit have been of little use for horses that live at low densities in deserts (like donkeys and some horses) or those who live in colder climates with furry coats and annual shading (as some horses).