“Zebras are very aggressive and injure more zoo keepers than any other zoo animal”:
https://www.realclearscience.com/vid…ot_zebras.html
Zebra stripes make flies dizzy?
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019…their-landings
Maybe zebra striped paint jobs on pastured horses would keep flies away?
Or zebra pattern blankets.
Wonder if we will be breeding zebra striped horses next.
Someone does make zebra striped fly sheets… Many years ago I attended the WOrld Mule SHow in Tennessee. There was a zorse and a zedonk… they were very cute. The zedonk was a mini but someone was riding the zorse. And there are brindle horses… http://www.brindlehorses.com/brinslides/hershey.htm
I read a history of Capt. M. Horace Hayes, a British Army veterinarian who spent a large amount of time in Africa. IIRC, he identified six subspecies of zebras, all of them wild but one that could be broke to ride. At the time he was working with a noted British equestrienne and they got one or two under saddle, but not reliably. I’m sorry I can remember more details. A Google search didn’t help with this.
But I did turn up a history that a major proponent of using Zebras was Lord Rothchild. He never got them under saddle but did break some to harness. Here’s an article on the issue. https://thomsonsafaris.com/blog/taming-zebras-domestication-attempts/
There are some claims of success and these may be with the type Capt. Hayes and his friend were able to break. But the Zebra is a wild animal and it will take as much time and selective breeding to get them under saddle as it took 15,000 years get the horse under saddle. Or maybe longer.
G.
fiddlesticks, with enough genetic diversity to choose desirable characteristics it would be possible to get “tame” zebras. In 10 generations, each with less than 120 subjects, 35% of foxes were “tame” in the famous Russian experiment.
Zebra does not= Vulpes. 
Not even close.
I saw a longish YouTube video on Zebras being trained to ride for a circus. There were maybe 7 youngesters and they got 6 rideable and the last one was too difficult. Sorry I can’t remember the clip. They trained them in pairs IIRC,side by side. Trainer said it made it easier to break and that was how they would be ridden in the performance.
They were really small little things, like donkeys more than ponies.
I’m on my phone otherwise I’d link it but there is a video on youtube of a girl riding and jumping a zebra.
ETA .The youtube channel is 4hoovesandstripes. Its Zack the Zebra then she also has Charlie the driving zebra.
Unfortunately even the minutia of zebras that are “rideable” have a tendency to hurt the people that try to train them.
There is a reason that zebras are not in your barn or showing in your neighborhood. They are mean as hell.
Zebra shows do not exist for the same reason. Zebras do not cooperate. They are not interested in performing for humans. They are not horses, they are Zebras, a different species of equid.
Zebras have been bred in captivity for decades. They aren’t coming around to our desire to ride them. Nor will Lions bred in captivity ever become your house (or barn) cat.
If it was possible to train them consistently to be riding animals, people that breed horses for color would be all over them. It’s not happening. :lol:
Foxes were bred down to those that would tame and guess what, they lost their color.
Wonder if you get a zebra line gentle enough to tame, will they also lose their stripes?
There is a real difference between feral horses taming nicely, they are only a few generations at best separate from the horses we domesticated for millennia, to taming a zebra or moose to make a reliable riding partner and so supress their real wild animal tendencies.
We caught a coyote pup about 4-6 weeks old or so, raised her in our household with five other dogs and several cats.
Our vet gave her vaccines like a puppy, we took her a couple times to puppy class, where she spent all time hiding under chairs or between my legs, so we quit stressing her like that.
She never did quite get over the world being a scary place, we could not trust her not to run off and get lost.
After a few months, she did get out of the yard and was gone for good one day.
Now, maybe our coyote would have tamed easier if younger, or just was one that didn’t have much of a brain for other than being a coyote, not very adaptable, another one may have tamed just fine.
My point of this thread was giving thanks for our horses, as the domesticated critters they are today.
So many of them can learn to adapt and live with and cooperate with other species as they do.
Even if they are fly bitten, don’t sport stripes that make flies dizzy.
Interesting.
That must have been before clicker training became more common?
With those principles, you can train most any alive, including the human animal, to cooperate and offer behaviors you want.
You can’t take the wild out, but you can work with those instincts right away.
Towards the end, as he had them working together, the zebras kept shaking their ears.
Did they have ticks in them, or is that part of zebra’s nervous habits or even communication, to tell others something?
Not sure, watching that.
As others have noted, you’ve got two different species, here, with very different survival imperatives.
And perhaps Dr. Hayes’ limited success tells us that it’s precisely “diversity” that you DON’T want. You want a LINE that has shown itself more amenable to human handling.
The first vet. we used when we moved here was an accomplished equine vet. but also had some experience with Zebras, none of them good. I used to tease him I was was going to get a Zebra stud, cross him onto Walkers (known for their relatively docile temperaments) and breed TN Walking Zorses. He quickly pointed out that I would need a new vet. for that venture!!! 
Lord Rothchild’s success, such as it was, with harness works show that it might be possible to get a working, domesticated Zebra. But even your own time line of 10 generations suggests a project that will take something approaching half a century, assuming all goes well. If it doesn’t, then…?
G.
:lol: FLASHBACK!!!
Anyone looking for a good chuckle can wander over to BackyardChickens.com & search for my thread on why getting a zebra to ride might not be a great idea.
Buyer was a relative novice to horses altogether (had worked with “rescues”) but OhEmGee! did I get raked over the coals - including a BB Timeout 
- for suggesting perhaps she was getting in over her head.
Found it:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/thr…2#post-7015964
Drat!
Thread has been heavily redacted - all the nasty has been edited out.
Short Version: every post I made after the initial query & contributions by those who actually worked with zebras (including zoo workers who advised when a zebra got loose the Code was the same as for escaped big cat or gorilla) - that hinted zebras were not horses, has been removed so only Sweetness & Light remains.
No further posts from her about the Dreem Zeeb & last posted in 2016.
Oh, well…
Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel went into the problems of domestication in some detail. It was pretty interesting. Some animal (and plant!) species lent themselves to being domesticated and provided value to the people doing the domestication (others might have been domesticatable but we weren’t interested). Other species fell firmly into the OH HELLZ NO category. #1 with a bullet was … the zebra.
(It had a lot to do with why some cultures got a leg up on others cultures in leaving the hunter-gatherer lifestyle behind. His theory was that if you were lucky enough to have they type of grains, fruits and birds/mammals that fell into this category, you got down this path a bit quicker than if you were short one or two of the above requirements. And it just so happened that the biggest concentration of all of the above reside around the 30th to 40th latitude… Mesopotamia Valley, China, Southern Europe… All early civilization leaders.
SnortyPants: I’ve done considerable research into the Russian fox experiments. My daughter actually visited the facility in Siberia where the experiments originated. Yes, some of the foxes are “tame,” in that they tolerate and even crave human contact. But a common misconception is that “tame” is the same as “domestic.” It is not. The “tame” foxes are not “domestic” animals. Attempts to place them in homes as pets have not been terribly successful, as they retain wild behaviors that aren’t compatible with happy coexistence in a human household. The foxes in the experiment are sad creatures, really unsuited to existence in the wild and unsuited to life as domestic animals. Bottom line: We have horses; why would we want to mess with (and mess up) zebras?
Tame is not the same as domesticated, but there are actual domesticated foxes.
Beowulf: The lead author on the article you cited is Lyudmila Trut, who assumed leadership of the fox experiments after their originator, and her mentor, passed away. Her claim that the foxes are domesticated is widely disputed.
I read this some years ago; it’s a fascinating book. He has a companion work, Collapse, that is equally fascinating.
G.
There was a place in BC called Paradise Valley that I used to go to - there they had two “zonies” and the owner said they were horrible little things completely wild, even though born in captivity. Cute, tho.
I was raised in Kenya - nobody rode a zebra or even tried! Probably could after many generations of breeding the calmest one to the calmest one like the Russian fox experiment. Somali ponies and Arabs were everywhere - no need.
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