ZEBRA, Africa’s striped equines, are endemic to our continent. The origin of the name zebra apparently comes from the word zibra meaning striped and originated with the Portuguese who were the first Europeans to settle in sub-Saharan Africa. The first recorded use of the name was in the Congo.
There are four zebra subspecies: the Burchell’s, the Hartmann’s mountain, the Cape mountain and the Grevy’s. The Grevy’s is the biggest of the lot, and inhabits Kenya’s dry Northern Province. Hartmann’s mountain zebra are found in southern Angola and the arid, mountainous regions of Namibia from Kaokoland southwards to the Karas region. Native to South Africa, the Cape mountain zebra has its nucleus within a small area in the Eastern Cape mountains. This subspecies was once in danger of extinction but, in 1936, the government intervened when they bought a farm and turned it into a mountain zebra reserve.
The Burchell’s, or plains zebra, is the most widely distributed throughout eastern and southern Africa, and the most numerous. They favour open savannah plains and grassland but
