The plains zebra is mid-sized and thick bodied with relatively short legs. Adults of both sexes stand about 1.4 meters (4.6 ft) high at the shoulder, are approximately 2.3 meters (8 ft) long, and weigh around 220–322 kg (484–708 lb). Males may weigh 10% more than females.
Like all zebras, they are boldly striped in black and white, and no two individuals look exactly alike. They also have black or dark muzzles. The natal coat of a foal is brown and white. All have vertical stripes on the forepart of the body, which tend towards the horizontal on the hindquarters. The northern populations have narrower and more defined striping; southern populations have varied but lesser amounts of striping on the underparts, the legs and the hindquarters. Southern populations also have brown “shadow” stripes between the black and white coloring. These are absent or poorly expressed in northern zebras.
An experiment was done at the Knoxville Zoo where a zebra was shaved. The underlying skin was black, not the previously thought white. The first subspecies to be described, the now-extinct quagga, had plain brown hindquarters. (Technically, because the quagga was described first as E. quagga, the proper zoological name for the most common form of the plains zebra is E. quagga burchelli.) There have been various mutations of the zebra’s pelage from mostly white to mostly black.Rare albino zebras have been recorded in the forests of Mount Kenya.
(From Wikipedia.org, December 27 2010)
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