Towheeblog

Click here for info on how you, too, can own a zebra. They’re very social and this one has only the big cow and some donkeys for company.

Click here to read a previous blog on zebra. It includes images I got in Uganda over a decade ago when we went there on a birding expedition. In the flesh, in the wild, I have never felt the presence of a more intense, sensitive, alive, alert creature. Always seen in presence of other zebra and even several other grazing species, a zebra is the essence, the concentration, of mammal life. Ears move independently, adjusting to any sounds coming from either side of the head, the tail is hardly ever still, the muscles beneath the skin ripple and pulse. When the decision to run is made, the acceleration is merlin-like, from still to streak in a breath. I wonder how our sluggard ancestors ever survived in such a natural world–like us they must have been devious and co-operative when survival demanded it.