Description

Three zebra fowl Rietvlei

Therina Groenewald: Three zebra fowl Rietvlei – professional photographer.

Three zebra fowl Rietvlei – Now the darkest side of a zebra is not its black stripes or its black skin but instead its social structure. Zebra are grouped into harems where there is one dominant male with as many as 6 females and their foals in the group.

All younger males with no harem would form bachelor herds and wait until they are big enough to start their own harem. Zebra stallions will fight with each other for females and will even go as far as stealing females from one another. If the female which is stolen is pregnant, the new male will rape her until such time as she has aborted the pregnancy.

Abortion would be done by releasing hormones that would cause her body to reabsorb the foetus or miscarry or if she gave birth to a live foal it would be kicked to death by the male. This seems extreme but it ensures that the strongest genetics survive and the killing of another males young is not uncommon practice in the animal kingdom and is called infanticide.