Zorse Zebra Horse Hybrid

A Zorse is an offspring/hybrid of a zebra stallion and a horse mare. It comes under the class, Mammalia. It is shaped like a horse and has bold stripes on his legs and often on, on the body or the neck. It is infertile like most of the inter-species hybrids. This unique hybrid experiment was carried out by Cossar Ewart.

Cossar Ewart was a professor of Natural History at the Edinburgh. He was a very well known geneticist and carried out the experiment of crossing a zebra stallion with horse and pony mares to produce Zorse and to investigate the theory of telegony or paternal impression. Cossar used Arabian mares in his experiment. The U.S. government also carried out similar experiments, which was reported in the book, Genetics in Relation to Agriculture by E.B. Babcock and R.E. Clausen.

A Zorse, which is the hybrid of horse and zebras was possible because they both belong to the same family equus- equines. Any two members of same equines can be crossbred to produce hybrids. The horse and the zebra are different in genetic make-up. The horse has 64 chromosomes and the zebra has 44-42 depending on its species. But they can be still hybrid as they are all equines.

A Zorse can be both, male or female. They are sterile as their chromosome count is 63. In order to breed a zorse, solid color horses are used in most of the time as the zebra stripping is overlaid on the colored areas of the hybrid coat. If the horse parent has white patches the zorse would have white patches along with stripe patches as he will inherit the genes for the white patches also.

A Zorse is more popular than pure bred zebras for riding and draught. The reasons for this are that they have better temperament then zebras. As their shape is more horse-like, especially in the shoulder region, it makes easier to obtain harness. But he has some drawbacks also.

It is very difficult to handle him as a pure bred horse and thus should not be ridden or purchased by the novices. As the zebras are white animals unlike the horses, which can be domesticated, pass their wild animal traits to their off-springs. As a result the Zorse have a strong temperament and can be quite aggressive like the zebras.

A Zorse has been featured in several movies including the animated ones and has been an inspiration for many songs. A zorse born in England in 2001, was the inspiration for the 2003, Song for the Zorse by a London band, The Coronets. A zorse named Zabrina was featured in the film, Im Reed Fish in the year 2007. Wikipedia