Zonkeys -the Zebra Donkey Hybrid
This is a report from my daughter Taiessa. I caught her emailing it to her teacher and laughed out loud as I read it. I asked if I could post it here. Surprisingly, she said yes. Her school report had a lot more pictures. I’ll just include this one…
Zonkeys – By Taya Lund age 12.
Have you ever imagined mixing random creatures with each other? This became reality with zonkeys, the creature accidentally bred by crossing zebras and donkeys together. What may seem like a monster takes it’s habitat, appearance, personality, and diet traits from it’s strange pair of parents.
When you first see a zonkey, you might think that it’s a horse gone wrong because of its hoofed feet, huge ears, long legs, and pony-like shape. Belonging to the horse family, zonkeys are about the same size as their equine cousins. They generally grow 5.2 feet tall and weigh between 500 and 800 pounds. Most zonkeys have fur colours common to horses (gray, black, white or brown), but have one thing that sets them apart – their stripes. These hybrids get their main colour, as well as their stripe patterns, from their donkey and zebra parents. The zigzag lines spread along the legs, stomach, and neck of these mammals, and are used as camouflage in the wild. But zonkeys aren’t always wild creatures, and can be popular for regular horse work. They have bodies shaped a lot more like their donkey parents. This makes them better for riding and draft work, since zebras have awkwardly shaped bodies that are hard to fit regular tack on to.
It can be hard to describe zonkey personality in general, since it mainly depends on how the parents behave. Donkeys are usually very easygoing and laid-back, but can seem like the laziest and most stubborn creatures on this planet on an “off-day.” The zebra side of the family can be unpredictable and usually panics under stress (with things like riding or training). This makes zonkeys difficult to handle and temperamental, but they can still be trained to do things like packing, driving, and riding. A zonkeys attitude also changes with the type of zebra the donkey parent is bred to. Since Grevy zebras are known to be aggressive, it makes their hybrids need a bit more of an attitude adjustment.
If you travel down to South Africa, you shouldn’t expect to find a group of zonkeys wandering around. Even though it is their natural habitat (where donkeys, mules, and zebras can usually live together), zonkeys are more than a little strange to find in the wild. There are a couple breeders throughout North and South America, though. But if you were “sight seeing” for zonkeys in Africa, you would probably have more luck looking in the open plains and bushy grassland, where zebras, donkeys, and, of course, zonkeys live together in herds. As mentioned before, zonkey stripes are used to camouflage…from dangerous predators waiting to pounce onto their hoofed and stripy dinner. The tall grasses and stripes work together and can trick hyenas, lions, and crocodiles into thinking that their prey isn’t around.
Since donkeys and zebras are both herbivores, you can probably guess that zonkeys eat plants. Things like grass, flowers, and leaves are the regular, but zonkeys can easily adapt to other green (or not so green) foods. If they find it, zonkeys have no problem eating shoots, shrubs, herbs, twigs and even tree bark.
So maybe mixing donkeys and zebras wasn’t such a mistake, after all. With their difficult but trainable personalities and ‘different’ kind of colourings, zonkeys came out as a half decent cross. Now we’ve just got to figure out what a zedonk is.
References:
a-z-animals.com
www.wikipedia.org
www.honoluluzoo.org
www.allexperts.com
www.spotsnstripes.com
