Tails of Africa

Off in the distance zebras nod as they plod past a line of trees.  Yes, this is the right way; Yes, this is the right way.  Several stop to look our way.

They are nature’s bar codes, no two alike.  Quintessential Africa.

In his book, Origin of Species, Darwin speculated on whether a zebra was a white horse with black stripes or a black horse with white stripes.  He compiled examples of the occasional striping on all horses, arguing that a trait from a distant common ancestor, white on black, is brought to full fruition in the zebra.  His examples noted that some zebras are born with white dots and blotches, incomplete stripes on a black background, Morse code instead of bar code, natural proof that a zebra is a black horse with white stripes.  The white is lack of pigmentation.

I think I’ve taken at least 300 photographs of zebras, of their herds, their stripes, their tails.  Tails of Africa: I have a whole album of animals turning their backs just as I press the shutter.  Portraits of elephant butts, giraffe butts, baboon butts (not a pretty sight for those who don’t get an immediate visual image), impala butts, even bird butts.   None of lions, however.  They tend to circle, keep you in sight.  The most butts in that album belong to zebras, notorious for twirling away just when I have a great shot lined up.

The zebra family of striped horses (Equidae) has four members: Plains zebra (Equus burchelli), Mountain zebra (Equus zebra), Grevy’s zebra (Equus grevyi) and Wild ass (Equus africanus).  I’ve never seen a Mountain zebra or a Wild ass (no jokes, please), but I’ve been fortunate enough to add plenty of photographs of the Plains zebra and Grevy’s zebra to Tails of Africa.

The Grevy’s zebra is the largest of the family members and looks a lot like a mule, with large rounded ears and a short, thick neck.  Their brush-cut manes are stiffly erect, broom-like, and sometimes extend all the way to the tail.  Stripes on a Grevy’s are narrow, close-set, brownish, and extend to the hooves.  Their bellies and the area around the base of their tail do not have stripes: Grevy’s zebras have white butts.  Foals are born with brown stripes that darken as they grow.  Found in Kenya and Ethiopia, there are only 2,000 Grevy’s left in the wild due to habitat loss.

Like all zebras, the stripes on a Grevy’s extend up through their manes.  Their muzzles are brown, and so is the whisk at the end of their tails.  Their lips and nostrils are gray.

In contrast, Plains zebras are nearly everywhere, from Ethiopia to East Africa, to Southern Africa, but usually no more than nineteen miles from the nearest water source.  Smallest of the zebras, it has horse-like ears and is thick-bodied with short legs.  Their stripes are vertical on their bellies, but swing more to the horizontal on their hindquarters and make neat collars around their necks.  Adults have black muzzles; foals are born brown and white.  Southern populations also have “shadow stripes,” a brown stripe in between black ones.  Their stripes extend nearly to their hooves.

You might think such a boldly patterned animal is easy to spot.  For humans, yes – we are used to bar codes and are able to string together space between vertical black slashes as part of the whole.  For lions, not so much, because cats can’t see color.  If they did, we would have cats with butts like baboons during mating season, a lovely (to baboons) come-hither red, or cats with blue balls, like those of Vervet monkeys.  (My blue balls are bigger than your blue balls.)Then again, maybe blue balls might work for lions, because they see mostly in blues and greens.

Stripes work to interrupt the outline of a zebra’s body – a lion sees only blobs of a lighter color of blue-green as an unrecognizable pattern – since no two zebras are striped the same it would be impossible to memorize a pattern as zebra!  Black stripes are seen by lions as blank spaces.  Add in a screen of bush and a hungry lion might walk right by an immobile zebra.  And when lions flush a herd of zebra, all those flashing stripes together give the herd a psychedelic pulse that make it difficult for lions to visualize individuals in the herd.

Zebras have thick, tough hides.  Healed scars from attempted lion take-downs often result in misaligned stripes.

But for photographers, even the butt end of a zebra is fun to capture – because, for the most part, their tails are striped, too.   And sometimes the light is just too perfect to resist.