Why Zebra Are Terrible Horses

[intrepidity]

I found this mildly interesting, just enough to share.

[samnsara]

1. that was fun..thank you!

[Leghorn21]

2. Brilliant!!!

Thanks for posting, intrepidity!!!

[brush]

3. Pigs, horses, cattle, goats, sheep, chickens, dogs...

cats (maybe), and what other animals are domesticated?

[TexasBushwhacker]

5. Rabbits?

They are certainly fecund. They are actually the best feed to meat converters around. For that reason, Whole Foods Market offered rabbit meat for a while, but it never really caught on.

[Kaleva]

8. Geese, ducks, donkeys,

[Bucky]

10. Oxen

menfolk

Cats are considered a unique case, cause they domesticated themselves

[wnylib]

11. Turkeys, llamas, camels, alpacas, parrots and

several other birds.

Regarding cats - They are domesticated, despite their capability for independence. If you encounter a cat in the woods, you definitely want it to be a domesticated cat, not a wild cat.

[Kaleva]

4. I found out as a kid that cows make bad horses.

[rownesheck]

6. I learned

that zebras are bastards and cats are tiny tigers who live in your house.

[Kaleva]

7. And we already knew that dogs hump pillows

[Bucky]

9. I'm in an alternative history discussion group. We've kicked this idea around a lot

Part of the domestication process involves the selective breeding of animals both for body types and the animals' disposition, both characteristics of which render zebras less domesticatable than the horses ancestors supposedly were.

But many species were altered in relatively a short time (measured in centuries of pre-history). There have been breeding efforts at domesticating foxes in Russia that produced impressive results within a century. I'm not convinced a similar program with zebras could not produce rideable, pleasant animal in a few hundred years of selective breeding