• PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    There’s some accounts throughout history, but humans generally leave them alone. They’re aggressive creatures surrounded by even more aggressive killing machines. So it stands to reason that an animal in that environment would be pretty tough to tame.

    • HejMedDig@feddit.dk
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      4 hours ago

      What you don’t spot on that picture is the front “zebra” in the back, is a painted horse. Apparently that helped the zebras remain more calm

      • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        I actually figured he must have had a more experienced horse along with the zebras to sort of lead the carriage. I know its done with dog sleighs, but not sure about horses.

    • ForeverComical@lemmy.ca
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      8 hours ago

      It has to do with social structures from what I read a while ago.

      Horses have a hierarchical structure and zebras don’t.

  • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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    1 day ago

    What distinguishes zebras from horses is that zebras live in anonymous herds. That is, they like to clump together to ward off predators, but they don’t know or like each other. They are not a uniform group with a leader. Horses on the other hand do have authorities and followers among them. And humans can hijack the role of the leader.

    CGPGrey: The Real Reason We Don’t Ride Zebras (6:23)

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      zebras live in anonymous herds. That is, they like to clump together to ward off predators, but they don’t know or like each other.

      Zebra’s don’t like anyone, and they’re not afraid to show it. Repeatedly.

      • M137@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        And donkeys like only one person and will absolutely fuck up anyone or anything that tries to hurt that person or the donkey itself.

    • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      What distinguishes zebras from horses is that zebras live in anonymous herds.

      says a lot about 4chan, the penny arcade GIFT theory, etc

      • Sundiata@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        4chan blocks commenting with vpn, and /pol/ is a federal honeypot waiting for the next entraptment.

        not so anonymous

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        With how Facebook forces real names, the idea that being anonymous has any influence where or not someone is a fuckwad had been debunked.

        • AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@piefed.social
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          1 day ago

          It’s not the anonimity that makes people fuckwads. It’s the lack of immediate consequences. A fuckwad won’t get a punch in the face for what they say on facebook, hence they feel they can say anything and be a fuckwad.

          • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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            24 hours ago

            “Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it”, Mike Tyson

            Regardless of how you feel about Tyson, Truth is Truth.

        • tempest@lemmy.ca
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          23 hours ago

          In a large enough group there is still anonymity even if your face and name are on there.

    • stenAanden@feddit.dk
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      12 hours ago

      This makes me wonder… How much of what he says is just conjecture? Do we ACTUALLY know with good certainty that zebras can’t be domesticated due to their nature? Or is it just a hypothesis/theory that has reached widespread popularity?

      I have heard that zebras (along with other African animals) can’t be domesticated because they have evolved to live among humans, when we were still man-apes. But that maybe that’s just conjecture too.

      Note how he have no sources in his video or description. And his comparison to chickens, cows, sheep and cats don’t seem to make much sense. The relation between humans and chickens/cows/sheep is markedly different from that of horses. Do wild fowl really have family structures? Cats don’t yet they are still docile among humans.

      Edit: even if we really can’t do we know the reason why?

        • stenAanden@feddit.dk
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          1 day ago

          But what if we spent longer time doing it? Like centuries, like with most other domesticated animals.

          • stray@pawb.social
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            22 hours ago

            I’m not sure why you’ve been downvoted because you absolutely could domesticate them given sufficient time and consistent selective breeding. You could turn them into crabs if you wanted to. The trouble is that they don’t have a very social disposition, so no one is motivated to dedicating their entire bloodline to the project. Most domestication happened kind of on accident as we developed symbiotic or exploitative relationships with various species.

          • HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            23 hours ago

            Domesticated animals generally start out already being somewhat agreeable. Like dogs hung around us, and work in a pack mentality, horses same thing, cats same thing. That’s why we could domesticate racoons or some rodents if we wanted to.

            Zebras are assholes and hate everyone

              • HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                4 hours ago

                Basically yea, but it still has a bit of the same where we had what they wanted and they were agreeable enough we worked with them. If anything they domesticated us 😂

          • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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            21 hours ago

            Might take more than centuries, but yes.

            We have a rescue dog from Korea as well as some neighbours ( not a standard breed, but a Korean Village dog, they basically live alongside humans as a breed but developed their own way). They are much different than “normal” dogs. They are more like cats. Their way on their terms. Like other dogs, don’t enjoy humans much. So even though they are domesticated, they still show the old lineage of being independent. My dogs idea of a good time is never chasing a stick or ball, but finding the highest vantage point at a park and watching everyone. A carryover from watching the plains from the hillside, or something.

      • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
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        22 hours ago

        I saw a historic photo in a magazine once, where some European colonial officers tried to tame and ride zebras

  • X@piefed.world
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    23 hours ago

    “Motherfucker, do you see the way I look?! Shit ain’t for the insta, that’s for sure. I’m quite visible to you so you have a long enough time to be getting far the fuck away from me.”

    • underisk@lemmy.ml
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      22 hours ago

      I thought the stripes were actually camouflage and they’re just monochromatic because the things they’re hiding from have poor color vision.

      • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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        22 hours ago

        Latest theory I heard was:

        A 2014 study found a correlation between striping and overlap with horse and tsetse fly populations and activity. Other studies have found that zebras are rarely targeted by these insect species. Caro and colleagues (2019) studied captive zebras and horses and observed that neither could deter flies from a distance, but zebra stripes kept flies from landing, both on zebras and horses dressed in zebra print coats. […] White or light stripes painted on dark bodies have also been found to reduce fly irritations in both cattle and humans.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra

      • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        22 hours ago

        The truth is we don’t actually know because the zebras don’t want us to:

        So, the question why zebras have stripes have proven very difficult and not without risks – Stephen Cobb has been bitten in the arm and admitted to hospital twice. Despite the extra vigour of recent work, the answer remains inconclusive.

  • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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    23 hours ago

    In the 1980s, in Tijuana, tourist kids could ride horses painted like zebras.

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          That could have potentially been bred out for domesticated strains like we did with horses also, but we never even got to that point because horse hierarchy and zebra hierarchy are very different beasts, and you can’t really tame a zebra matriarch and have the rest of the herd fall into line, because zebras don’t have that kind of matriarchal social system. They are so mistrustful and hard to approach that we were never even able to get to square one.

          • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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            16 hours ago

            IIRC a few African groups have legends of people trying to tame zebras as long term mounts or livestock, and these legends rarely end well for the attempter.

  • stenAanden@feddit.dk
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    1 day ago

    I honestly wonder if we actually COULD domesticate zebras but it would taking centuries or millennia. Just like other domesticated species.

    • Chais@sh.itjust.works
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      14 hours ago

      No. Zebras don’t have a herd hierarchy we can exploit. With horses you pick out the lead horse, tame it and boom, the whole herd follows you.
      With zebras you get one zebra, if you’re very lucky. More likely you’ll get kicked and bitten.

    • oatscoop@midwest.social
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      22 hours ago

      Selective breeding is no different than natural evolution in how drastically it can change an organism given enough time and the right selections for “fitness”.

      So you could produce a domesticated, tame zebra – but waiting on and favoring the right mutations would take a very long time and be prohibitively expensive. It’s possible, but not realistically feasible.