ZEBRA, OR TIGER HORSE 



Colonel Roosevelt Secures a Zebra for the National Museum — Natives Hunt them for Food — 

 A Herd of Zebras on the Velt — Hundreds of Thousands of them in East Africa. 



While Africa has no horses and no tigers, still it has an animal which in 

 some respects at least resembles both and, therefore, has been called the 

 "tiger-horse," or zebra, meaning streaked or banded. These beautiful equines 

 are very numerous in East Africa — some travelers have estimated their num- 

 ber at half a million — and Colonel Roosevelt saw large herds of them along 

 the Uganda Railroad and on the Kapiti Plains. Like the gnu, the zebra is 

 an inquisitive animal. When frightened it will scamper away a few hundred 

 yards and then stop and look around as if to find out who its pursuers are. 

 The Colonel secured several fine specimens of zebra for the National Museum. 

 While he did not find the zebra hunt a dangerous pastime, still it was not 

 entirely void of excitement, for the zebra is exceedingly ferocious and attacks 

 with its teeth anyone approaching sufficiently near, as we may see when we 

 visit our zoological gardens, which usually possess one or more specimens of 

 the African zebra. 



Our ex-President found it hard to distinguish these black-and-white striped 

 animals even at close range, for they blend remarkably well with the colors 

 of the velt. Under certain lights they appear greyish, and when they were 

 resting at noon, in the shade of trees and high bushes, the dancing shadows of 

 branches and twigs mingled strangely with their stripes. 



The zebra is polygamous, a sort of animal Mormon. The strong stallion 



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