Y do zebras have strips when dey actually look like a donkey?

Answer 1

As far as the reason for the stripes, well there are several.

1: Is the most "duh" of the bunch, that being it is a way to blend into the group and habitat thus making it harder for preds to pick out individuals in the group. It might seem odd considering they are high contrast black and white vs where they live, but when you throw a group together they blend into one massive blurr.

2: The stripes serve also as a finger print thus making it simpler for foals to tell who is mama. The young tend to trail just behind their mother and the stripes over the rump let them know they are following the right bum.

3: The "science" world has exactly yet to figure the why, but for some reason there are species of flies and other flying pests that stay away from herds. Again they have yet to figure out the exact reason, but they believe it has something to do with the stripes.

4: They still argue about it but they also believe that the stripes help to control the body temp of the animal. The old, dark colors absorb the heat, light reflect. Thus the flip flop pattern of the color help to level it all out.

As far as not looking like a donkey... well just because an animal is related to one another does not always mean they will look the same. Look at all the sizes and colors macaws come in.

Answer 2

First zebras are donkeys. They can actually interbreed creating a fertile offspring (the offspring can have offspring of its own).

Second as far as the stripes...I'll start by saying that lions are not colorblind though I am sure you will see that answer. Cats are very good at seeing some colors. Even if they were not it would still be easy for a lion to spot the black and white stripes against the solid backgoround. That background is why almost all plains mammals are solid brown with countershading.

Zebras are not camouflaged in the grass. Despite some assertions to the contrary. Zebras use their stripes to camouflage themselves against the other herd members. A lion or other predator will have trouble spotting an individual within the herd. They also use there stripes to hide the exact location of their legs.

A study was done in the late 60's or early 70's to test this theory. They repainted the stripes on a zebra. Some they painted all black, some all white, and others they repainted with all vertical (including legs) stripes. All groups had higher predation rates than normal. It turns out that by repainting the legs stripes vertically, it made it easier for predators to judge the exact location of their legs. This allows the predator to make a successful grab. On wild zebras this would be a VERY dangerous grab since a misjudgment may result in a broken jaw.


And yes as coyote mentioned there are a few other possibilities that have been suggested but are as yet have not been completely supported, like the testse fly theory, the body temperature regulation and the foal following the mother. None of these negate the primary reasons of camouflage within the herd, and predator avoidance by optical illusion using horizontal stripes on legs.

Sorry, but I had to leave and return to this. I was not finished earlier.

Answer 3

zebras have stripes because it allows them to camoflauge among tall grass in a grassland. As for why it has stripes when it looks like a donkey, horses, zebras, and donkey are all distantly related. The stripes are an adaptation to survive among predators in a savannah