Why Don't Humans Ride Zebras?

They’re just horses with stripes, right? So why don’t we ride them around like Seabiscuit or Black Beauty?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, I'm
Christian Saga and this is brain stuff. You may have
seen a few videos on the internet of zebras being
ridden around and it looks pretty cool. And I'm not
talking about movies like Sheena Queen of the Jungle where
actors just ride a horse painted to look like a zebra.

(00:23):
Zebras would be useful to ride, especially in some parts
of Africa, because of their resistance to the diseases that
kill horses and cattle. It's not impossible, So what's the deal.
Why don't we ride zebras well? Zebras can be tamed,
but they can't be domesticated, much like elephants. A domesticated
animal is defined as an animal selectively bred in captivity

(00:45):
and thereby modified from its wild ancestors for use by
humans who control the animals breeding and food supply. The
success rate for domesticating most animals is surprisingly low. In fact,
according to geography professor or Jared Diamond, who's the author
of Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies,

(01:06):
every animal domesticated by humans, especially the major five goats,
cheap pigs, cattle, and horses, they are all exactly alike
in six important ways. First, they all eat the right diet. Second,
they have a tendency not to panic. Third, they have
a pleasant disposition. Fourth, they live within a social hierarchy.

(01:27):
Fifth they have a very fast growth rate, and sixth
they have the ability to breed in captivity. Now the
problem with zebras they're unpredictable, aggressive, and just downright mean.
An animal only has to fail one test to be excluded.
The zebra does so spectacularly. Zebras lack a pleasant disposition,

(01:48):
and in short, they're just jerks. They're unpredictably aggressive, and
they have a nasty habit of biting and not letting go.
In fact, zebras evolved to survive in Africa, where lions
are their main predator. Therefore they're aggressive. They can kill
a lion with a kick to the head. Imagine what
that kick would do to you a human. For example,

(02:08):
in the nineteen eighties, a herd of zebras was captured
for relocation in Zimbabwe. Sixteen animals were loaded into a
truck and driven off. When the truck arrived at its destination,
only one zebra was left alive. The others had kicked
each other to death. It's possible to train them individually,
but it's not easy. Trying to train and ride a

(02:31):
zebra is pretty dangerous. In fact, Rory Young, who's a
professional guide, ranger and tracker, says that while a zebra
can be trained, it's not practical or humane to do it.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many efforts
were made to train zebras. This was mainly because sub
Saharan Africa is inhabited by flies that carried tripa nosamassis

(02:54):
or trips. Cattle and horses are susceptible to this disease
and they die, making large parts of Africa totally inaccessible
to Europeans. So it was hoped that zebras would replace them.
But to change zebras natural aggressive instincts would require harsh
and inhumane treatment. However, there are a couple examples of

(03:15):
humane zebra training. For instance, racehorse trainer Bill Turner trained
one Indorset, England. He rides it around his village and
a zebra, which is named Zebedee, sees everything as a predator,
so it's totally unpredictable and easily startled. But Turner has
had to use a different style of training where he
didn't chastise the animal. And there's also an American teenager

(03:37):
named Shaya Inman who has also trained her zebra to
be written. You can go on YouTube and look and
there's tons of videos of people riding zebras, but we
don't know how they are trained, and they're not necessarily
domesticated though, the other problem with zebras is that they're
too small to be properly saddled. Zebras are actually small
animals that haven't been bred to have strong backs that

(03:58):
can support cargo or riders. They could possibly be used
to pull carts, but even that is difficult based on
their own social hierarchy. Some animal trainers and breeders have
created zebra hybrids, such as the Source, a cross between
a zebra and a horse, or the Zonkey, which is
what you get when you cross a zebra and a donkey.

(04:19):
So far, there's no specific purpose to creating zebra hybrids,
though they're not stronger or more useful than regular horses
and donkeys. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
please visit us at how stuff works dot com