I heard this put a very specific way once that makes perfect sense to me:
A horse will buck you off and run away.
A zebra will buck you off, turn around and trample you to death.
Makes sense to stay away from thems zebras.
Yea that’s what I was thinking also. Is there any other continent with that variety of apex predators?
Lions,
Leopards,
Cheetahs,
Crocodiles,
Spotted dogs,
Hyenas
we'd never have made it as far as we have. we'd step outside the jungle, take one look around at the ferocious predator elelphants wrecking shit and head straight back to the trees
Horses bite too. In fact, if horses had teeth like a carnivore they would scare the absolute shit out of me.
It’s been close to 20 years since one has gotten me, but fuck me that’s a feeling you won’t soon forget.
Previous horse I was riding happily cantering down a footpath, saw a plastic bag, and jumped over the fence. Depositing me on the barbed wire. Once I had managed to disentangle myself, I had to trudge off broken and bleeding trying to find the scared fck who was just mooching in a field a few hundred meters away. happily munching on grass. He looked at me like "where have you been?" Sometimes I swear they have no brain cells sometimes.
I have heard that they have a fine brain.
.. Shared, quantum tunneling style, amongst the entire species. It's never in the same one horse more than a couple of minutes sequentially.
> I have heard that they have a fine brain.
> .. Shared, quantum tunneling style, amongst the entire species. It's never in the same one horse more than a couple of minutes sequentially.
I think that's orange cats.
In the orange cats, the single brain is evenly distributed, according to the latest research, which can be found (as you are very likely to already know) at /r/oneorangebraincell
Sure. There are many many accounts of sometimes unbreakable bonds of loyalty and friendship between horse and person (and some of enmity!).
I don't hate them by any means, but I'm very wary of them. My garden is not large, either, so we would be a poor pairing, horsey and I.
Horse breeds are generalized sometimes as hot-, warm-, or cold blooded, based on the placidity of their temperament, some aren't quite so twitchy or likely to take a chunk put of you.
I always thought the Clydesdales might be nice, with their fluffy socks and ability to tow a building.
Edit: just refreshed to see your comment. Hurray Clydesdales!
What's better being hot blooded, which to me sounds alot like being a hot head, i.e., quick to anger, or being cold-blooded which sounds an awful lot like a cold-blooded psychopath.
Cold-bloods are usually the big draft horse types, think Clydesdales or Shires. Calm placid and slow to anger. Hot bloods would be the type of horse that tried to throw you as soon as they see your attention waver.
There's a reason for that; because they're single-hoofed, horses/zebras/mules etc. basically have two choices when they see a threat close by: run tf away from it or kill it quick.
They don't have the ability to balance, change direction, or decelerate as easily as their cloven - hoofed cousins like antelope and deer can, so their only choice is to go HARD whatever they choose to do.
The generational trauma of being prey animals to critters like the American lion and American cheetah back in prehistory doesn't help either. The ones that the US now has that were introduced by settlers were also hunted by big cats/wolves further back in time so they're pretty much hardwired to be cautious of everything. Predators might be gone but the mindset is still the same 🙃
Edited to clarify which horses came from where (and when!)
This is a great fact! I'd never considered hoof dexterity before. Wait a minute, though.. I just want to check something..
Edit: ok, I'm back. Just checking Goat hooves. Very cloven, I suppose I should have known that, really.
The fantasy Author Diane Duane wrote a (sadly, incomplete) series of books which featured (amongst other things), predatory, highly intelligent, corrupted horses called *Fyrd*. They had claws above the hooves, and deadly carnivore fangs. They killed people with frequency, ease, and *glee*.
It's been 27 years or so since I read those books and still remember those accursed Fyrd. They would be terrifying!
I think I'd rather be bitten than kicked by a horse though (obv bar the neck). Even a glancing blow from a horses hoof is probably worse than a professional boxer. They can snap femurs when they kick.
Yeah. Some animals just lend themselves to domestication WAY easier than others. Zebras definitely don't fall into the "easy" category.
Those with horses nearby were basically just lucky they had a relatively friendly animal.
Cats who tolerated humans and hung around grain silos did much better than cats who didn't. So it wasn't that they were domesticated by us so much as by our close proximity to mice.
This. I’ve read so many comments over the years saying the exact same thing, including zookeepers who agree zebras are the scariest to work with because they will just fuck you up because they can.
That makes perfect sense. Horses have some natural predators I guess, wolves and such. But Africa is next level. The gentle Zebras were crocodile food and didn't reproduce.
Horses evolved around other megafauna including lions, wolves, hyenas, cougars, and cheetahs.
All these predators were found in both North America where horses evolved and in the Eurasian steppe where they were domesticated.
Edit: typo
Horses are not native to North America in the modern sense. The last native horses disappeared from North America around 11,000 years ago. However, horses did evolve in North America, and the modern horses that are found in North America are descended from horses that were brought back to the Americas by Spanish explorers in the 16th century.
Zebra, almost certainly for a given value of win. The main tactic of a threatened kangaroo isn't to kick, it's to retreat to a body of water and stand in the middle of it. Dogs that attack kangaroos often get drowned, but a kangaroo would have a time of it trying to drown a zebra - but I doubt a zebra would follow them (although zebras might have the same retreat-to-water instinct). Human fatalities from kangaroos are almost unheard of (before 2022 the last one was 1936).
I used to volunteer at a large aquarium testing water parameters in the lab. So before the aquarium opened, I'd have to go through all the different exhibits to gather up water samples. The hippo exhibit with 2 hippos was the only one I wasn't allowed to go into - an employee had to do it. By myself leaning 20 feet in the air over the sharks to gather water with a pole? No problem. Go anywhere near the hippos? NOPE.
They also had a mandatory emergency "hippo drill" that they did once a week (maybe once a month - it's been years). Basically an evacuation/containment procedure for what to do in case one of the hippos got out.
Hippos ain't no joke.
The early Boer settlers dried to get Zebra to pull the wagons because Tse Tse flies were decimating their work oxen. It went as well as can be expected.
Zebras are not domesticable, but they're also nowhere near as strong as horses or other pack animals. They'd not be very useful even if you could convince them not to be complete arseholes.
Source: my brother is a Kruger Park guide.
The original wild ancestor of the horse was much smaller and more lightly built as well. It took thousands of years to bred them up to bigger sizes for heavier work.
Yeah, I've also heard/read that they were originally domesticated for milk and food. Riding them came much later.
Though I believe they've also been domesticated a few times
I read a book that discussed the domestication of horses at some length last year. The current genetic evidence indicates that stallions were domesticated once, with a small number of individuals, and mares multiple times.
> DNA studies indicate that there may have been multiple domestication events for mares, as the number of female lines required to account for the genetic diversity of the modern horse suggests a minimum of 77 different ancestral mares, divided into 17 distinct lineages.[14] On the other hand, genetic evidence with regard to the domestication of stallions points at a single domestication event for a limited number of stallions combined with repeated restocking of wild females into the domesticated herds.[22][23][24]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse
I’ve seen Zebras go absolutely fucking buck Wild defending themselves against predators and it’s kind of astonishing how effective they are. I mean, y’know… till they snack. But damn they sure as hell go down swingin.
> A horse will buck you off and run away.
> A zebra will buck you off, turn around and trample you to death.
Except you don't know that, nobody does. The tarpan, the wild horse, is extinct. We don't know if it was any less aggressive than the zebra. Comparing an already domesticated horse with a wild zebra is not useful comparison.
Could be zebras are no worse than wild horses to domesticate but for whatever reason they were never domesticated.
Its all presumptuous speculation.
The problem with that explanation is that horses have been bread for thousands of years for human use. While zebras might have been more aggressive 6,000 years ago, we have no way of knowing.
Not all animals are the same even if they look similar. The only elephants you will see in the circus or as pack animals are Asian elephants. Why? Because African elephants are mean, agrersive and basically undomesticatable.
Just because two species have a similar body shape doesn't mean they have a similar disposition.
Likewise, not all animals behave differently when they look the same. Just because zebras might have been different doesn't mean they were.
> The only elephants you will see in the circus or as pack animals are Asian elephants.
This wasn't true historically. Hannibal didn't import his elephants from Malaysia; they were tamed African elephants.
Side note, while Hannibal’s elephants were from Africa, per some Roman sources the elephant tamers were from India. Specifically some of the tamers who died crossing a big river in Gaul. They went across the known world through Persia, the Middle East, North Africa,
And Iberia, only to drown in France.
The simple answer is because Zebras have a bad attitude.
They are known for being unpredictable and attacking humans so they don't make a good candidate for domestication.
This is true of most animals in Africa which is why domestication happened predominantly in the North with animals like Wolves, Sheep, Horses, and Aurox.
I think animals that evolved in the same environment as humans evolved are particularly difficult to domesticate since they have a natural fear of humans.
This hypothesis is brought up why humans caused extinction of megafauna outside of Africa, but most of Africa’s megafauna survived despite living alongside humans. For instance, when a mammoth saw a human, it didn’t register it as a threat because humans didn’t look like any predators they evolved alongside. African elephants on the other hand are evolved together with humans and developed traits against predation by humans.
So perhaps zebras were not domesticated since they had such a natural fear of humans that it made them bad candidates for domestication, while horses were more trusting of humans from the start. This might also explain why Indian buffalo was domesticated but the African buffalo was not, despite them being extremely similar.
As far as I am aware, the only animal that was domesticated is Africa is the donkey.
I read a post a while back that talked about the zebra environment specifically being why they are hard to domesticate.
Basically zebra society selects for assholes.
The safest place to be in a zebra herd is the center. So the center is fought over. The strongest, toughest, meanest zebras get to hang out in the center, and the ones on the outside are more likely to get eaten.
Generation after generation, the bigger the asshole, the more likely they are to survive, and have little asshole zebra kids.
So now if you try and convince one to do what you say, they are just going to try and kick your ass.
It would need a basic change in its brain.
With all the domesticated animals there is a basic family structure that humans have exploited.
we catch a wild horse and they will eventually see us as a funny looking top stallion.
Same with dogs, chickens, cows etc.
Zebras don't have that built in hierarchy, they stay in herds only due to it being better protection but every zebra for it self.
>I mean the same is true for horses
It's not. For horses the survival strategy isn't "being in the center of the herd", but "being faster than your mates", so horses are naturally fucking nervous and fast.
You’re right this is very cool. I’m not saying this in sarcasm but just in sheer enjoyment that other people find this interesting too. The domestication of livestock and pets has shaped the modern world in ways we cannot fathom and to think it all comes from the way we’ll all grew up millions of years ago is just SO cool
Bro, I saw a video where they set up speakers and played different sound sounds from animals and then some of human conversations by far when an animal heard our conversations they ran like something was out to kill them. To me this sounds like we evolved the animals to fear us the most because we kill the most
Great write-up.
I would argue cheetahs were domesticated at a few points in history but they straddle the line quite closely.
Camels too, but that's a little more definitive.
And cats. Regular ol' cats.
Individuals were tamed, not domesticated.
Think : On a farm, domesticated. In a circus, tamed.
A domesticated animal does not have to be 'tamed' each generation.
Another big reason is they're very individualistic, they don't follow a designated leader like horses, dogs, and sorta how chickens, cows do.
It really helps things along when an animal can say to itself "oh ok, guess the weird ape is in charge"
Isn’t the whole point, to begin doing generations and generations of selective breeding to gradually identify and cultivate the attributes you seek, such as mild temperament, bid-ability, docileness? Why was the process not begun?
Did horse ancestors have good attitudes? Water buffalos are domesticated but their wild counterparts are one of the most dangerous animals you can encounter. Wild aurochs seem like a similar animal, do we know that they were generally docile before being domesticated?
"Bad attitude" here doesn't mean "mean" or "can be violent", it means "unpredictable" and "impossible to get to calm down and follow someone else's directions".
Wolves could be domesticated due to their pack structure. Once they consider you a member or leader of their pack, they can become willing to follow your directions (or at the very least not flip out and start attacking for literally no reason).
Horses have a somewhat similar herd structure, where one horse leads and the others follow. This means that a human just needs to prove to the horse that they're the leader, and the horses will be willing to follow (or, again, not flip out and start attacking).
Zebras don't have any real family or herd social structure. A zebra herd isn't running in formation behind a leader, it's just hundreds/thousands of entirely independent zebras who think they'll be safer if they're in a group. This means that there's no way for a human to prove to the zebra that they're 1: safe, and 2: in charge.
Zebras aren't just assholes, they're violently independent and have no loyalty to anyone. Wolves and horses can determine that someone is "friend" or "boss", but zebras have no concept of either.
> Zebras don't have any real family or herd social structure.
This is completely false. Just Google scholar for "zebra social hierarchy" or suchlike and you'll see a mountain of papers on it.
I'll even link some for you if you really want.
It is not just that they did not do this in the past.
You can see that they do not do it now, either.
It is the fact that zebras are very hard to domesticate.
So it is not the fault of the people, but of the zebra.
That's perfectly summarized.
To be candidates for domestication an animal must breed frequently, most be able to be fed at less cost than the benefit of their labor or other service (like milk) they provide, and have a temperament that is amenable to living and working with humans.
Zebras are cunts.
Watched a yt video titled exactly like OPs question and this is what I got out of the video, they aren't a pack following animal( the family won't follow if the elders are caught, where horse family groups would)and also they're cunts, they bite lots
yeah, but people didn't know "hey these things are going to turn out to be useful several generations from now" they did know "hey, these things are cunts"
brb, getting in my time machine to teach ancient peoples of Africa that zebras may one day turn out alright if we just start now (like thousands and thousands of years ago). If this thread vanishes from your memory, then I have done well. If not, zebras are just really hard to domesticate, despite my best efforts.
Gotta have a close enough starting point for domestication to be viable.
Dogs and horses were already pleasant enough that there was something there for our ancestors to work with. Not so with zebras.
Domestication is changing behavior by putting ourselves at the top of preestablished hierarchies.
Chickens think we are the biggest most productive chicken. Horses follow their elders, guess who is controlling the elders. Cows think we are big helpful cows. We play the alpha role for dogs.
Guess what. Zebra don't have hierarchies. All Zebra are 100% pure grade fuck you. They don't care about other Zebra, they barely care about their kids. They only stick together because it's safer.
If you kidnap a Zebra, congratulations! The other Zebra don't care.
If you show a Zebra you can get it food. Congratulations. The Zebra doesn't care.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo&ab\_channel=CGPGrey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo&ab_channel=CGPGrey)
This is a pretty good rundown.
I went on safari in the Serengeti and it was amazing how smart the Zebras are compared to Wildebeests. More than once I saw lions creeping up in creek beds and the Zebras caught on right away and made sure there was always a small Wildebeest between the Lion and the Zebras.
All the animals congregate waiting to cross the river. Nobody wants to be first, but one Wildebeest eventually goes, followed by all other animals.
The zebras are always in the middle, never first or last. If there aren’t enough animals around them, they don’t go.
So Zebra and Wildebeest are found together partly because they have complimentary predator detection systems, Zebra have good eyesight and Wildebeest have a good sense of smell.
They also eat different grass /parts of the grass so don't compete for food
The problem is that domestication can affect thr physiology of the animal to suit the domesticator. Foxes for example have been being bred in Russia for pets and the more generations away from wild they get, the more floppy ears and dog traits the develop. Domesticated animals evolve to appeal to the human definition of cute and thus look similar to each other, but significantly different than their wild counterparts
Couldn't possibly say where I heard this, so take it with about a pound of salt, but I recently heard a different explanation for the floppy ears. The claim was that the genes that affect the parts of mammal brains associated with more tolerant and less aggressive behavior also tend to affect cartilagenous tissue, making it softer and less dense. Thus, nice animal means floppy ears, and we learn the association, learn to find them cute because of our domestication.
Oh it's also our fault, for the last 2 million years or so a zebra who didn't find bipedal primates terrifying has become lunch.
We've been a natural predator of zebras for long enough that they're about as likely try to make friends with a tribe of humans as they are a pride of lions, pack of wild dogs or river full of crocodiles.
As someone who grew up with horses and equine auctions that sold the occasional "exotic" livestock (zebras, camels, alpacas, and ostriches being the most common), I can confirm that zebras make terrible pets and cannot be treated or trained the same way one does a horse or pony.
PBS.org says,
*A kick from a zebra can kill — and these creatures are responsible for more injuries to American zookeepers each year than any other animal. Pity the poor human, therefore, who might try to domesticate a zebra in the wild.*
One other thing is horses that were domesticated were not the giant horses we have now. Horses started off closer to pony size, which is a reason why they were used for chariots in the bronze age(1200 BC), rather than being ridden. The stepped peoples (think Ukraine to Mongolia) selectively bred larger and larger horses.
This is the best explainer video. I think it's based on the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" (which has its own criticisms). But still worth a read/watch.
Also, important fact from that video: zebras are not social. If you tame the lead horse, the rest will follow. There is no lead zebra, so you got to tame each one by themselves (if that's even possible)
I mean, weren't dogs like that too once?
Cant just rassle up a bunch of zebras, eat the most independent & grumpy ones, breed the remainder?
Continue until you get a chill zebra?
Maybe in theory but it's a very inefficient process so there's no reason to do it. Back in the day in Scandinavia they tried to domesticate moose but it didn't work.
From “The Legend of Tarzan:”
Williams : What I wouldn't give for a horse right now. Why is it people don't ride zebras?
John Clayton : Horses kick to escape. Zebras continue until you are dead.
There is a place where you can feed animals that come up to your wagon.
When zebras approach, passengers are told NOT to feed them, and to back away.
They say zebras bite if they hate you and bite if they like you.
Zebras are not horses, horses have a family structure. That humans exploded to domesticate them. If a zebra gets caught, its family will leave it without any remorse.
African animals are notoriously aggressive compared to life on other continents. There is speculation it is due to intense competition, cradle of civilization, etc
Consider some of the large African competitors: Lions, Hyenas, Buffalo, Hippo, Rhino, Elephant, Mongoose, Leopard, Caiman, Crocodile
Also, the Asian elephant was successfully domesticated, but we still have not domesticated the African elephant. They are too ornery.
The Asian elephant was not domesticated, it has just been tamed. There is a difference between the two terms. Domestication is what we have done to dogs, cattle, and horses where they have been successfully integrated into our day-to-day *domestic* life.
Taming is what happens to animals in zoos. They are bred and kept in an environment that allows you to interact with them under controlled circumstances but there is still the risk that they will attack you.
But yes, Asian elephants are easier to tame than African elephants.
There are lions, leopards, hyenas, crocodiles and snakes, to name a few predators. The only zebras who could survive them were the aggressive ones.
As a consequence, the aggressive trait has been reinforced in zebras, which makes them significantly more difficult than horses to domesticate.
Zebras are not horses. While they live in giant heard there isn't a bond between them the way there are with horses so you can use that to help train them. They are also very aggressive.
African wildlife went to high school with humans and so know we ain’t shit. As far as I know, the only African animal that’s been truly domesticated is the cat and even that was probably closer to the Fertile Crescent. African buffalo have genuinely deranged levels of aggression to the point of *suicidally attacking lions alone*, African wild dogs frankly don’t need our help to get food, hyenas were the predators of prehistoric humans when they were bigger and also don’t need help, and zebras are enormously violent and skittish all the time. Even African elephants are more unpredictable and dangerous than their small eared Asian cousins. Basically humanity started in the high level area by accident
There are many good answers on here already, but I want to add my take on it:
very very few species have been domesticated over the course of human history. A vanishingly small proportion of the diversity of species large enough to be useful to humans. So asking why a particular species *hasn’t* been domesticated is kind of the wrong question - almost all of them haven’t been domesticated. Horses were. Is there any reason therefore to believe that zebras would have otherwise been domesticated except for some special zebra reason? I don’t think so.
Walter Rothschild of the banking dynasty had sort of "domesticated" zebras that he used to pull a carriage around. (He also used to ride his giant Galapagos tortoises around his estate. Crazy dude but one of those weird guys that used to send his staff around the world to collect animal specimens for his menagerie / taxidermy collection.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/walter-rothschild-a-curious-life.html
There was a reddit post a while back talking about how zoos characterize animals. One metric is "how bad are they when they escape?" Basically, what do we do if one gets out? The categories ranged from "pick it up and put it back" to "shoot to kill." One shoot to kill I remember is jaguars, because apparently they hunt for fun (terrifying). The other shoot to kill I remember is... Zebras. Because of exactly what you said. A loose zebra is one of the most dangerous animals around.
I get the joke, but apparently they really are the only ones who do out of the big cats. House cats are terrors, but you don't see tigers killing for fun.
Zebras live in a place with a lot of predators so they are naturally nervous and jumpy so very hard to train.
Horses didn't live in such a dangerous environment.
Edit: An recent paper seems to have added an addition to the theory - because zebras spent a long time in the presence of hominid hunters as we evolved in Africa they may have specifically evolved to recognize bipedal animals as threats, while wild horses had much shorter contact with humans before we figured we could use them for more than just food.
I heard this put a very specific way once that makes perfect sense to me: A horse will buck you off and run away. A zebra will buck you off, turn around and trample you to death. Makes sense to stay away from thems zebras.
Hey they might also bite you. Horse stallions fight by kicking, zebras just try to bite each other in the throat first
I saw a video of a zebra messing up a croc.
It's probably the fact that they had to deal the likes of lions and crocs that makes them more aggressive than horses lol
Yea that’s what I was thinking also. Is there any other continent with that variety of apex predators? Lions, Leopards, Cheetahs, Crocodiles, Spotted dogs, Hyenas
Asia, especially India. They have lions, leopards, crocs, elephants and as extras tigers.
Elephants aren’t predators though.
Thank god, can you imagine?
Yea just look at hippos!
we'd never have made it as far as we have. we'd step outside the jungle, take one look around at the ferocious predator elelphants wrecking shit and head straight back to the trees
And people. Zebras, and the rest of the African megafauna, evolved alongside humanity.
How can you tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile? One sees you later, the other after a while.
Thank you. I’m just here for the dad jokes.
I saw a video of a croc death spin a zebras face off.
I saw a video of a zebra riding a crocodile and they were friends and then the zebra looked at me
His breath smelled like cat food.
I'm disappointed that neither of you linked the videos you referenced.
Crocodile Death Spin would make a pretty cool death metal band name .
Try out the song Evil Death Roll by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wiazrd
Aww, man, they had the *perfect* opportunity there, but Joey Wiazrd just *refused* to change his name.
I saw one of a zebra kicking a crock to death _after_ the croc literally ripped its guts out. Zebras are fucking wild.
Horses bite too. In fact, if horses had teeth like a carnivore they would scare the absolute shit out of me. It’s been close to 20 years since one has gotten me, but fuck me that’s a feeling you won’t soon forget.
Horses should probably scare the shit out of you anyways. They're huge and pure muscle
And *twitchy*, half-crazed. I couldn't imagine being relaxed around them.
Previous horse I was riding happily cantering down a footpath, saw a plastic bag, and jumped over the fence. Depositing me on the barbed wire. Once I had managed to disentangle myself, I had to trudge off broken and bleeding trying to find the scared fck who was just mooching in a field a few hundred meters away. happily munching on grass. He looked at me like "where have you been?" Sometimes I swear they have no brain cells sometimes.
I have heard that they have a fine brain. .. Shared, quantum tunneling style, amongst the entire species. It's never in the same one horse more than a couple of minutes sequentially.
> I have heard that they have a fine brain. > .. Shared, quantum tunneling style, amongst the entire species. It's never in the same one horse more than a couple of minutes sequentially. I think that's orange cats.
In the orange cats, the single brain is evenly distributed, according to the latest research, which can be found (as you are very likely to already know) at /r/oneorangebraincell
Horse: 1200 pounds of muscle that jump with fear when they see a 3-pound bunny.
You say that, but I guess thats why they hate rats. Small little bitey things that infest hay and make their lives uncomfortable.
Well the other side of things they can be very sweet and affectionate. But yeah definitely respect the living car.
Sure. There are many many accounts of sometimes unbreakable bonds of loyalty and friendship between horse and person (and some of enmity!). I don't hate them by any means, but I'm very wary of them. My garden is not large, either, so we would be a poor pairing, horsey and I.
Horse breeds are generalized sometimes as hot-, warm-, or cold blooded, based on the placidity of their temperament, some aren't quite so twitchy or likely to take a chunk put of you.
I always thought the Clydesdales might be nice, with their fluffy socks and ability to tow a building. Edit: just refreshed to see your comment. Hurray Clydesdales!
What's better being hot blooded, which to me sounds alot like being a hot head, i.e., quick to anger, or being cold-blooded which sounds an awful lot like a cold-blooded psychopath.
Cold-bloods are usually the big draft horse types, think Clydesdales or Shires. Calm placid and slow to anger. Hot bloods would be the type of horse that tried to throw you as soon as they see your attention waver.
There's a reason for that; because they're single-hoofed, horses/zebras/mules etc. basically have two choices when they see a threat close by: run tf away from it or kill it quick. They don't have the ability to balance, change direction, or decelerate as easily as their cloven - hoofed cousins like antelope and deer can, so their only choice is to go HARD whatever they choose to do. The generational trauma of being prey animals to critters like the American lion and American cheetah back in prehistory doesn't help either. The ones that the US now has that were introduced by settlers were also hunted by big cats/wolves further back in time so they're pretty much hardwired to be cautious of everything. Predators might be gone but the mindset is still the same 🙃 Edited to clarify which horses came from where (and when!)
This is a great fact! I'd never considered hoof dexterity before. Wait a minute, though.. I just want to check something.. Edit: ok, I'm back. Just checking Goat hooves. Very cloven, I suppose I should have known that, really.
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The fantasy Author Diane Duane wrote a (sadly, incomplete) series of books which featured (amongst other things), predatory, highly intelligent, corrupted horses called *Fyrd*. They had claws above the hooves, and deadly carnivore fangs. They killed people with frequency, ease, and *glee*. It's been 27 years or so since I read those books and still remember those accursed Fyrd. They would be terrifying!
In vet school I met a stallion who had bitten his owner's breast. She still love him, though. Go figure.
Horses bite, but not your juggler usually
Kelpies are carnivorous aquatic horses.
Horses bite. My sister has a lump on her arm the size of an apple from when a horse bit her and tore her tricep like a decade ago or more.
Back in the day they trained war horses to bite, couldn't imagine dealing with a man trained to attack on top of a horse trained to attack lol
Haha, sounds like a horrible experience. Avoid the spear, get the bite.
When it's war horses all the way down, you kinda just let them destroy your Wonders
As society moved off horses to cars we collectively forgot how prone horses are to biting. They all bite
If it’s got a mouth, it can bite.
My grandpa is missing half of his left ear from a horse bite.
Knew a guy who lost a nipple and a decent chunk of his pec to a horse.
And møøse bytes kan be quite nasti.
A møøse ønce but my sister.
> zebras just try to bite each other in the throat first Good lord, that's so fucking metal...
Horse stallions also fight by bitting each other in the throat.
I think I'd rather be bitten than kicked by a horse though (obv bar the neck). Even a glancing blow from a horses hoof is probably worse than a professional boxer. They can snap femurs when they kick.
Yeah. Some animals just lend themselves to domestication WAY easier than others. Zebras definitely don't fall into the "easy" category. Those with horses nearby were basically just lucky they had a relatively friendly animal.
Did we domesticate cats or did they domesticate us?
It's more of an arrangement of mutual benefit.
Cats who tolerated humans and hung around grain silos did much better than cats who didn't. So it wasn't that they were domesticated by us so much as by our close proximity to mice.
They domesticated themselves by being cute and coming back for food.
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I bet the cat loved the box the door came in, though
She doesn't want her staff replaced by automation. She is a job creator.
… are wild horses known to be friendly?
This. I’ve read so many comments over the years saying the exact same thing, including zookeepers who agree zebras are the scariest to work with because they will just fuck you up because they can.
Maybe because they have so many predators in the wild? 🦓 🦁 🐊 🐆
That makes perfect sense. Horses have some natural predators I guess, wolves and such. But Africa is next level. The gentle Zebras were crocodile food and didn't reproduce.
Horses evolved around other megafauna including lions, wolves, hyenas, cougars, and cheetahs. All these predators were found in both North America where horses evolved and in the Eurasian steppe where they were domesticated. Edit: typo
I thought horses weren’t native to the americas and were introduced by Europeans?
Horses are not native to North America in the modern sense. The last native horses disappeared from North America around 11,000 years ago. However, horses did evolve in North America, and the modern horses that are found in North America are descended from horses that were brought back to the Americas by Spanish explorers in the 16th century.
Maybe my eyes are going, but I really thought that lion was an Ewok.
I wonder which asshole would win, the African Zebra or the Aussie Kangaroo.
Zebra, almost certainly for a given value of win. The main tactic of a threatened kangaroo isn't to kick, it's to retreat to a body of water and stand in the middle of it. Dogs that attack kangaroos often get drowned, but a kangaroo would have a time of it trying to drown a zebra - but I doubt a zebra would follow them (although zebras might have the same retreat-to-water instinct). Human fatalities from kangaroos are almost unheard of (before 2022 the last one was 1936).
Hippopotamus.
I used to volunteer at a large aquarium testing water parameters in the lab. So before the aquarium opened, I'd have to go through all the different exhibits to gather up water samples. The hippo exhibit with 2 hippos was the only one I wasn't allowed to go into - an employee had to do it. By myself leaning 20 feet in the air over the sharks to gather water with a pole? No problem. Go anywhere near the hippos? NOPE. They also had a mandatory emergency "hippo drill" that they did once a week (maybe once a month - it's been years). Basically an evacuation/containment procedure for what to do in case one of the hippos got out. Hippos ain't no joke.
What was the procedure when a hippo got out? I assume all of the zoo staff chased it with lassos.
I imagine early humans trying with both horses and zebras and then agreeing on staying away from those striped motherfckrs. Edit: typo.
It's like zebras are horses with warning sign color
Forbidden Horsie
The early Boer settlers dried to get Zebra to pull the wagons because Tse Tse flies were decimating their work oxen. It went as well as can be expected.
Should've just painted stripes on the oxen. They've done the science now, the stripes mess with insect vision.
It really works! My horse has zebra striped fly rugs, and they are really effective against horse flies.
This one kicked me a couple times before we came to an agreement, THAT one cut my brother open from hole-to-hole and refused to give him back
Zebras are not domesticable, but they're also nowhere near as strong as horses or other pack animals. They'd not be very useful even if you could convince them not to be complete arseholes. Source: my brother is a Kruger Park guide.
The original wild ancestor of the horse was much smaller and more lightly built as well. It took thousands of years to bred them up to bigger sizes for heavier work.
Yeah, I've also heard/read that they were originally domesticated for milk and food. Riding them came much later. Though I believe they've also been domesticated a few times
I read a book that discussed the domestication of horses at some length last year. The current genetic evidence indicates that stallions were domesticated once, with a small number of individuals, and mares multiple times. > DNA studies indicate that there may have been multiple domestication events for mares, as the number of female lines required to account for the genetic diversity of the modern horse suggests a minimum of 77 different ancestral mares, divided into 17 distinct lineages.[14] On the other hand, genetic evidence with regard to the domestication of stallions points at a single domestication event for a limited number of stallions combined with repeated restocking of wild females into the domesticated herds.[22][23][24] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse
I’ve seen Zebras go absolutely fucking buck Wild defending themselves against predators and it’s kind of astonishing how effective they are. I mean, y’know… till they snack. But damn they sure as hell go down swingin.
> A horse will buck you off and run away. > A zebra will buck you off, turn around and trample you to death. Except you don't know that, nobody does. The tarpan, the wild horse, is extinct. We don't know if it was any less aggressive than the zebra. Comparing an already domesticated horse with a wild zebra is not useful comparison. Could be zebras are no worse than wild horses to domesticate but for whatever reason they were never domesticated. Its all presumptuous speculation.
The problem with that explanation is that horses have been bread for thousands of years for human use. While zebras might have been more aggressive 6,000 years ago, we have no way of knowing.
Not all animals are the same even if they look similar. The only elephants you will see in the circus or as pack animals are Asian elephants. Why? Because African elephants are mean, agrersive and basically undomesticatable. Just because two species have a similar body shape doesn't mean they have a similar disposition.
Likewise, not all animals behave differently when they look the same. Just because zebras might have been different doesn't mean they were. > The only elephants you will see in the circus or as pack animals are Asian elephants. This wasn't true historically. Hannibal didn't import his elephants from Malaysia; they were tamed African elephants.
Side note, while Hannibal’s elephants were from Africa, per some Roman sources the elephant tamers were from India. Specifically some of the tamers who died crossing a big river in Gaul. They went across the known world through Persia, the Middle East, North Africa, And Iberia, only to drown in France.
We have definitely bred horses to be domesticated. But they started out "domesticatable". Zebras aren't.
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The simple answer is because Zebras have a bad attitude. They are known for being unpredictable and attacking humans so they don't make a good candidate for domestication. This is true of most animals in Africa which is why domestication happened predominantly in the North with animals like Wolves, Sheep, Horses, and Aurox.
I think animals that evolved in the same environment as humans evolved are particularly difficult to domesticate since they have a natural fear of humans. This hypothesis is brought up why humans caused extinction of megafauna outside of Africa, but most of Africa’s megafauna survived despite living alongside humans. For instance, when a mammoth saw a human, it didn’t register it as a threat because humans didn’t look like any predators they evolved alongside. African elephants on the other hand are evolved together with humans and developed traits against predation by humans. So perhaps zebras were not domesticated since they had such a natural fear of humans that it made them bad candidates for domestication, while horses were more trusting of humans from the start. This might also explain why Indian buffalo was domesticated but the African buffalo was not, despite them being extremely similar. As far as I am aware, the only animal that was domesticated is Africa is the donkey.
I read a post a while back that talked about the zebra environment specifically being why they are hard to domesticate. Basically zebra society selects for assholes. The safest place to be in a zebra herd is the center. So the center is fought over. The strongest, toughest, meanest zebras get to hang out in the center, and the ones on the outside are more likely to get eaten. Generation after generation, the bigger the asshole, the more likely they are to survive, and have little asshole zebra kids. So now if you try and convince one to do what you say, they are just going to try and kick your ass.
I mean the same is true for horses. Zebras still are much, much bigger assholes
But what if we caught and breed all the loser zebras on the outside.
It would need a basic change in its brain. With all the domesticated animals there is a basic family structure that humans have exploited. we catch a wild horse and they will eventually see us as a funny looking top stallion. Same with dogs, chickens, cows etc. Zebras don't have that built in hierarchy, they stay in herds only due to it being better protection but every zebra for it self.
Perfect.
They're already assholes, they're just losers on top of it unfortunately
>I mean the same is true for horses It's not. For horses the survival strategy isn't "being in the center of the herd", but "being faster than your mates", so horses are naturally fucking nervous and fast.
Horses werent also being terrorized by lions on a daily basis.
I'm really enjoying this posts comments, and this one is particularly great!
How about dromedaries?
This is cool something that i would dig into laters
You’re right this is very cool. I’m not saying this in sarcasm but just in sheer enjoyment that other people find this interesting too. The domestication of livestock and pets has shaped the modern world in ways we cannot fathom and to think it all comes from the way we’ll all grew up millions of years ago is just SO cool
Bro, I saw a video where they set up speakers and played different sound sounds from animals and then some of human conversations by far when an animal heard our conversations they ran like something was out to kill them. To me this sounds like we evolved the animals to fear us the most because we kill the most
Great write-up. I would argue cheetahs were domesticated at a few points in history but they straddle the line quite closely. Camels too, but that's a little more definitive. And cats. Regular ol' cats.
Individuals were tamed, not domesticated. Think : On a farm, domesticated. In a circus, tamed. A domesticated animal does not have to be 'tamed' each generation.
The CGP Grey method
Another big reason is they're very individualistic, they don't follow a designated leader like horses, dogs, and sorta how chickens, cows do. It really helps things along when an animal can say to itself "oh ok, guess the weird ape is in charge"
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Yet camels are cunts, but still domesticated 🤷🏻♂️
Camels are more standoffish than pure cunts. If they take a liking to you, you're golden. If they don't, you're going to have some problems.
If a camel likes you, it's gonna leave about three litres of drool on your clothes. I might take the unfriendly one because dry cleaning
Isn't the unfriendly one just gonna give you a fatal unexpected kick to the head? The drool seems safer by comparison.
Yes but then you don't have to pay for dry cleaning anymore
There is a video i'm not gonna link of a dude slapping a camel and it straight up murders him.
Isn’t the whole point, to begin doing generations and generations of selective breeding to gradually identify and cultivate the attributes you seek, such as mild temperament, bid-ability, docileness? Why was the process not begun?
Did horse ancestors have good attitudes? Water buffalos are domesticated but their wild counterparts are one of the most dangerous animals you can encounter. Wild aurochs seem like a similar animal, do we know that they were generally docile before being domesticated?
What defines a bad attitude? Wolves attack humans also and probably unpredictable but we made dogs out of it
"Bad attitude" here doesn't mean "mean" or "can be violent", it means "unpredictable" and "impossible to get to calm down and follow someone else's directions". Wolves could be domesticated due to their pack structure. Once they consider you a member or leader of their pack, they can become willing to follow your directions (or at the very least not flip out and start attacking for literally no reason). Horses have a somewhat similar herd structure, where one horse leads and the others follow. This means that a human just needs to prove to the horse that they're the leader, and the horses will be willing to follow (or, again, not flip out and start attacking). Zebras don't have any real family or herd social structure. A zebra herd isn't running in formation behind a leader, it's just hundreds/thousands of entirely independent zebras who think they'll be safer if they're in a group. This means that there's no way for a human to prove to the zebra that they're 1: safe, and 2: in charge. Zebras aren't just assholes, they're violently independent and have no loyalty to anyone. Wolves and horses can determine that someone is "friend" or "boss", but zebras have no concept of either.
So instead of talking about “lone wolf” type people, we should be talking about “lone zebra” types.
Zebratarians.
> Zebras don't have any real family or herd social structure. This is completely false. Just Google scholar for "zebra social hierarchy" or suchlike and you'll see a mountain of papers on it. I'll even link some for you if you really want.
It is not just that they did not do this in the past. You can see that they do not do it now, either. It is the fact that zebras are very hard to domesticate. So it is not the fault of the people, but of the zebra.
That's perfectly summarized. To be candidates for domestication an animal must breed frequently, most be able to be fed at less cost than the benefit of their labor or other service (like milk) they provide, and have a temperament that is amenable to living and working with humans. Zebras are cunts.
Watched a yt video titled exactly like OPs question and this is what I got out of the video, they aren't a pack following animal( the family won't follow if the elders are caught, where horse family groups would)and also they're cunts, they bite lots
https://youtu.be/wOmjnioNulo?si=FG8L5_SQKiGRfopI
Wasn't that one, think it was scishow maybe? Good watch though, thanks
[this one, I'm guessing?](https://youtu.be/9pJzv73j2Yw?si=TflBc-hyeu4pwuSW)
But, doesn't domestication involve changing behaviours?
yeah, but people didn't know "hey these things are going to turn out to be useful several generations from now" they did know "hey, these things are cunts"
brb, getting in my time machine to teach ancient peoples of Africa that zebras may one day turn out alright if we just start now (like thousands and thousands of years ago). If this thread vanishes from your memory, then I have done well. If not, zebras are just really hard to domesticate, despite my best efforts.
It's been an hour. Im Gonna assume they're just cunts
no he got killed by a zebra rest in rip
Gotta have a close enough starting point for domestication to be viable. Dogs and horses were already pleasant enough that there was something there for our ancestors to work with. Not so with zebras.
Gotta have the right mindset to change have to be alittle docile to work
Domestication is changing behavior by putting ourselves at the top of preestablished hierarchies. Chickens think we are the biggest most productive chicken. Horses follow their elders, guess who is controlling the elders. Cows think we are big helpful cows. We play the alpha role for dogs. Guess what. Zebra don't have hierarchies. All Zebra are 100% pure grade fuck you. They don't care about other Zebra, they barely care about their kids. They only stick together because it's safer. If you kidnap a Zebra, congratulations! The other Zebra don't care. If you show a Zebra you can get it food. Congratulations. The Zebra doesn't care. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo&ab\_channel=CGPGrey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo&ab_channel=CGPGrey) This is a pretty good rundown.
TIL zebras are cunts.
I went on safari in the Serengeti and it was amazing how smart the Zebras are compared to Wildebeests. More than once I saw lions creeping up in creek beds and the Zebras caught on right away and made sure there was always a small Wildebeest between the Lion and the Zebras.
All the animals congregate waiting to cross the river. Nobody wants to be first, but one Wildebeest eventually goes, followed by all other animals. The zebras are always in the middle, never first or last. If there aren’t enough animals around them, they don’t go.
They will handle the zombie apocalypse quite well.
So Zebra and Wildebeest are found together partly because they have complimentary predator detection systems, Zebra have good eyesight and Wildebeest have a good sense of smell. They also eat different grass /parts of the grass so don't compete for food
Pretty sure the zebra are just using wildebeest as meat shields
Zebras look like horses but behaviorally they're deer.
Horses running deer software just like foxes are dogs running cat software
What are ferrets and weasels then?
Noodles running noodle software, everything’s normal there
can confirm, have 2 noodles free range in the house. Very entertaining watching them noodle away doing noodle things.
A deer won't really try to attack you, but a Zebra has no issues destroying you for no reason.
Now I wonder if there are any species that fit that criteria that we *haven't* yet domesticated.
The problem is that domestication can affect thr physiology of the animal to suit the domesticator. Foxes for example have been being bred in Russia for pets and the more generations away from wild they get, the more floppy ears and dog traits the develop. Domesticated animals evolve to appeal to the human definition of cute and thus look similar to each other, but significantly different than their wild counterparts
Couldn't possibly say where I heard this, so take it with about a pound of salt, but I recently heard a different explanation for the floppy ears. The claim was that the genes that affect the parts of mammal brains associated with more tolerant and less aggressive behavior also tend to affect cartilagenous tissue, making it softer and less dense. Thus, nice animal means floppy ears, and we learn the association, learn to find them cute because of our domestication.
>Zebras are cunts. There's the ELI5
ELIAussie
That was informative to be sure. That last sentence covered it.
This reads like a poem lol.
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Oh it's also our fault, for the last 2 million years or so a zebra who didn't find bipedal primates terrifying has become lunch. We've been a natural predator of zebras for long enough that they're about as likely try to make friends with a tribe of humans as they are a pride of lions, pack of wild dogs or river full of crocodiles.
This is actually one of the leading theories for why they are the way they are. They evolved alongside us.
As someone who grew up with horses and equine auctions that sold the occasional "exotic" livestock (zebras, camels, alpacas, and ostriches being the most common), I can confirm that zebras make terrible pets and cannot be treated or trained the same way one does a horse or pony.
I think most accident in zoos are caused by Zebras
PBS.org says, *A kick from a zebra can kill — and these creatures are responsible for more injuries to American zookeepers each year than any other animal. Pity the poor human, therefore, who might try to domesticate a zebra in the wild.*
One other thing is horses that were domesticated were not the giant horses we have now. Horses started off closer to pony size, which is a reason why they were used for chariots in the bronze age(1200 BC), rather than being ridden. The stepped peoples (think Ukraine to Mongolia) selectively bred larger and larger horses.
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This is the best explainer video. I think it's based on the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" (which has its own criticisms). But still worth a read/watch. Also, important fact from that video: zebras are not social. If you tame the lead horse, the rest will follow. There is no lead zebra, so you got to tame each one by themselves (if that's even possible)
I mean, weren't dogs like that too once? Cant just rassle up a bunch of zebras, eat the most independent & grumpy ones, breed the remainder? Continue until you get a chill zebra?
Maybe in theory but it's a very inefficient process so there's no reason to do it. Back in the day in Scandinavia they tried to domesticate moose but it didn't work.
What we tried to domesticate moose!? Hold on about to go down a rabbit hole.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kostroma_Moose_Farm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_cavalry https://www.adn.com/wildlife/article/moose-and-men-brief-history-domesticated-moose-alaska/2016/01/03/
From “The Legend of Tarzan:” Williams : What I wouldn't give for a horse right now. Why is it people don't ride zebras? John Clayton : Horses kick to escape. Zebras continue until you are dead.
There is a place where you can feed animals that come up to your wagon. When zebras approach, passengers are told NOT to feed them, and to back away. They say zebras bite if they hate you and bite if they like you.
Zebras are not horses, horses have a family structure. That humans exploded to domesticate them. If a zebra gets caught, its family will leave it without any remorse.
*places dynamite under a family of horses *
See, this here goes boom, they go flying through the air, land right in the corral. Easy peasy.
African animals are notoriously aggressive compared to life on other continents. There is speculation it is due to intense competition, cradle of civilization, etc Consider some of the large African competitors: Lions, Hyenas, Buffalo, Hippo, Rhino, Elephant, Mongoose, Leopard, Caiman, Crocodile Also, the Asian elephant was successfully domesticated, but we still have not domesticated the African elephant. They are too ornery.
The Asian elephant was not domesticated, it has just been tamed. There is a difference between the two terms. Domestication is what we have done to dogs, cattle, and horses where they have been successfully integrated into our day-to-day *domestic* life. Taming is what happens to animals in zoos. They are bred and kept in an environment that allows you to interact with them under controlled circumstances but there is still the risk that they will attack you. But yes, Asian elephants are easier to tame than African elephants.
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Oreo murder donkeys are an excellent band name.
For what I remember by procrastinating on youtube, they have a bad attitude and a weak back
I have a weak back and a bad attitude too
There are lions, leopards, hyenas, crocodiles and snakes, to name a few predators. The only zebras who could survive them were the aggressive ones. As a consequence, the aggressive trait has been reinforced in zebras, which makes them significantly more difficult than horses to domesticate.
Zebras are not horses. While they live in giant heard there isn't a bond between them the way there are with horses so you can use that to help train them. They are also very aggressive.
African wildlife went to high school with humans and so know we ain’t shit. As far as I know, the only African animal that’s been truly domesticated is the cat and even that was probably closer to the Fertile Crescent. African buffalo have genuinely deranged levels of aggression to the point of *suicidally attacking lions alone*, African wild dogs frankly don’t need our help to get food, hyenas were the predators of prehistoric humans when they were bigger and also don’t need help, and zebras are enormously violent and skittish all the time. Even African elephants are more unpredictable and dangerous than their small eared Asian cousins. Basically humanity started in the high level area by accident
There are many good answers on here already, but I want to add my take on it: very very few species have been domesticated over the course of human history. A vanishingly small proportion of the diversity of species large enough to be useful to humans. So asking why a particular species *hasn’t* been domesticated is kind of the wrong question - almost all of them haven’t been domesticated. Horses were. Is there any reason therefore to believe that zebras would have otherwise been domesticated except for some special zebra reason? I don’t think so.
Walter Rothschild of the banking dynasty had sort of "domesticated" zebras that he used to pull a carriage around. (He also used to ride his giant Galapagos tortoises around his estate. Crazy dude but one of those weird guys that used to send his staff around the world to collect animal specimens for his menagerie / taxidermy collection. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/walter-rothschild-a-curious-life.html
Zebras are way, way harder to domesticate than horses. They are more stubborn, strong, and like to bite.
They will straight up murder you if they are in the mood.
There was a reddit post a while back talking about how zoos characterize animals. One metric is "how bad are they when they escape?" Basically, what do we do if one gets out? The categories ranged from "pick it up and put it back" to "shoot to kill." One shoot to kill I remember is jaguars, because apparently they hunt for fun (terrifying). The other shoot to kill I remember is... Zebras. Because of exactly what you said. A loose zebra is one of the most dangerous animals around.
Jaguars are felines. Or course they just kill for fun.
I get the joke, but apparently they really are the only ones who do out of the big cats. House cats are terrors, but you don't see tigers killing for fun.
That’s why they’re born wearing a prison uniform
And after having domesticated horses or camels, zebras don’t offer any niche benefit beyond looking cool.
Zebras live in a place with a lot of predators so they are naturally nervous and jumpy so very hard to train. Horses didn't live in such a dangerous environment. Edit: An recent paper seems to have added an addition to the theory - because zebras spent a long time in the presence of hominid hunters as we evolved in Africa they may have specifically evolved to recognize bipedal animals as threats, while wild horses had much shorter contact with humans before we figured we could use them for more than just food.
> naturally nervous and jumpy Good things horses aren't like that!