Zebra

War and peace, work and play, rain and shine, day and night, the horse has plodded, cantered and galloped its way through most of recorded human history. Until the early part of the 20th century it was present at almost every momentous event that helped shape the world we live in. Bronze statues of noble steeds now stand proudly in public places in most of the world’s major cities, inevitably carrying an important bronze somebody or other on their back.

- David Muirhead

While the horse was building this epic reputation, its close African cousin, the zebra, managed to keep its head down and hence avoided being drawn into bloody battles and interminable parades. There were odd exceptions. The first zebra to reluctantly reach Europe probably arrived in about AD 240 from a port in North Africa aboard a galley destined for Ostia, the ancient port of Rome. At the end of this dangerous, and no doubt uncomfortable, journey, the zebra took part in a lavish extravaganza at the Coliseum. It was marveled at and then killed, most probably in an inescapable confrontation with an imported lion. The Romans came to know the zebra as hippotigris, which means ‘tiger horse’ in Latin. The name we use in all likelihood originated in Africa, possibly the Congo, and entered the English language via Portuguese or Spanish during the 1600s. English speakers then liberally applied the word to describe a whole host of other things with black-and-white stripes, from fish to pedestrian crossings. Being familiar in form and yet strange in appearance, the paradoxical zebra has long been a source of wonder and fascination. Modern scientific theory, based on foetal evidence, maintains that it is a black animal with white stripes, though feel free to argue if you’ve wagered on the opposite being the case. This does not, of course, explain why it has such bold and dramatic stripes in the first place, something that seems odd,