Grevy's zebra is, as a rule, an inhabitant of open or thinly wooded country, and it appears to avoid anything in the nature of thick cover. In Central Somaliland Major Swayne met with it on low plateaux some 2,500 feet above sea-level, the sides of which fell in broken ravines to the river-valleys. This country is described as broken and hilly, and here Grevy's zebras were met with in small droves of about half a dozen. In the country between Mount Kenia and Lake Rudolph, Mr. A. H. Neumann frequently met with herds of Grevy's and Burchell's zebras consorting together. The contrast between the two species when thus seen side by side was very marked, the former animals looking like horses among a flock of ponies. Mr. Neumann never observed stallions of the two species fighting together, but on the other hand he states that the stallions of the larger species fight viciously amongst themselves for possession of the mares. Grevy's zebras seem never to collect in large herds, more than twenty, or at the outside thirty, being very seldom seen together.
Photo by J. T. Newman] [Berkhamsted.
THE HON. WALTER ROTHSCHILD'S TEAM OF ZEBRAS.
Mr. Rothschild was practically the first Englishman to break in zebras to harness. At one time these animals were thought to be quite untamable.
Although this species is an inhabitant of arid plains and bare stony hills where the herbage is short, it requires to drink daily, and is never therefore found at any great distance from water.
The cry of Grevy's zebra is stated to be quite different from that of Burchell's. Mr. Neumann describes it as a very hoarse kind of grunt, varied by something approaching to a whistle, the grunts being long drawn out, and divided by the shrill whistling sound, as if the latter were made by drawing in the breath which had been expelled during the sustained grunt.
Like all other species of the genus to which they belong, Grevy's zebras, especially the mares when in foal, become very fat at certain seasons of the year, and their flesh is much appreciated both by natives and lions, the latter preying on them and their smaller congeners, Burchell's zebras, in preference to any other animal, now that the rinderpest has almost exterminated the great herds of buffalo which once roamed in countless numbers all over East Central Africa.
Burchell's Zebra once inhabited the whole of South-western, South-eastern, Central, and Eastern Africa from the Orange River to Lake Rudolph; and though it has long ceased to exist in the more southerly portions of its range, it is still the most numerous and the best known of all the species of zebra.
