Photo of the Day

This is a young Zorse, a cross between a Zebra and a Horse. Dad is in the background, Bally Vaughn Game Park, Zimbabwe, Africa.

From Wikipedia:

A zorse or zebrula is the offspring of a zebra stallion and a horse mare; the rarer reverse pairing is sometimes called a hebra. It is a zebroid: this term refers to any hybrid equine with zebra ancestry.

The zorse is shaped more like a horse than a zebra, but has boldly striped legs and, often, stripes on the body or neck. Like most other interspecies hybrids, it is infertile.

Cossar Ewart, Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh (1882-1927) and a keen geneticist, crossed a zebra stallion with horse and pony mares in order to investigate the theory of telegony, or paternal impression. Cossar Ewart used Arabian mares. Similar experiments were carried out by the US Government and reported in "Genetics in Relation to Agriculture" by E.B. Babcock and R.E. Clausen and in "The Science of Life" by H.G. Wells, J. Huxley and G.P. Wells (c.1929).

Zebras, donkeys and horses are both members of the family equus -- equines. Equines can be crossbred to produce hybrids. They are all slightly different in genetic makeup, but still all equines. That is, horses have 64 chromosomes, zebra have between 44 and 62 (depending on species). Zorses can be male or female, but are sterile since their chromosome count is 63.