The Living Animals of the World 



Grevy's zebra is, as a rule, an inhabitant of open or thinly wooded country, and it 

 appears to avoid anything in the nature of thick cover. In Central Somaliland Major Swayne 

 met with it on low plateaux some 2,500 feet above sea-level, the sides of which fell in broken 

 ravines to the river- valleys. This country is described as broken and hilly, and here Grevy's 

 zebras were met with in small droves of about half a dozen. In the country between Mount 

 Kenia and Lake Eudolph, Mr. A. H. Neumann frequently met with herds of Grevy's and 

 Burchell's zebras consorting together. The contrast between the two species when thus seen 

 side by side was very marked, the former animals looking like horses among a flock of ponies. 

 Mr. Neumann never observed stallions of the two species fighting together, but on the other 

 hand he states that the stallions of the larger species fight viciously amongst themselves 

 for possession of the mares. Grevy's zebras seem never to collect in large herds, more than 

 twenty, or at the outside thirty, being very seldom seen together. 



Although this species is an inhabitant of arid plains and bare stony hills where the herbage 



is short, it requires 

 to drink daily, and 

 is never therefore 

 found at any great 

 distance from water. 

 The cry of 

 Grevy's zebra is 

 stated to be quite 

 different from that 

 of Burchell's. Mr. 

 Neumann describes 

 it as a very hoarse 

 kind of grunt, varied 

 by something 

 approaching to a 

 whistle, the grunts 

 being long drawn 

 out, and divided by 

 the shrill whistling 

 sound, as if the latter 

 were made by draw- 

 ing in the breath 

 which had been ex- 

 pelled during the 

 sustained grunt. 



Like all other 



species of the genus to which they belong, Grevy's zebras, especially the mares when in foal, 

 become very fat at certain seasons of the year, and their flesh is much appreciated both by 

 natives and lions, the latter preying on them and their smaller congeners, Burchell's zebras, 

 in preference to any other animal, now that the rinderpest has almost exterminated the great 

 herds of buffalo which once roamed in countless numbers all over East Central Africa. 



BURCHELL'S ZEBRA once inhabited the whole of South-western, South-eastern, Central, and 

 Eastern Africa from the Orange Eiver to Lake Eudolph ; and though it has long ceased to 

 exist in the more southerly portions of its range, it is still the most numerous and the best 

 known of all the species of zebra. 



The typical form of this species was first met with early last century by Dr. Burchell in 

 Southern Bechuanaland. In this form the legs are white below the knees and hocks, and the 

 body-stripes do not join the median stripe of the belly. In examples met with farther north 

 the legs are striped down to the hoofs and the body-stripes join the belly-stripe. South of 



Photo by J. T. Newman'] [Berkliamsted. 



THE HON. WALTER ROTHSCHILD'S TEAM OF ZEBRAS. 



Mr. Rothschild was practically the first Englishman to break in zebras to harness. At one time these animals 



were thought to be quite untamable. 



