I know that this is sort of a subject about which I do not write often, since I am, for the life sciences, more botanist than zoologist. But this topic was by special request from a friend, that friend indicating that zebras are her or his favorite animal. So Zebras it is.
Actually, as I began doing research on them, I also became fascinated with them as well. Not only are they extremely handsome animals, they have an extremely complex diversification into diverse subspecies, something that I vaguely knew but was very interested to learn more about as the research continued.
Zebras are uniquely African, except of course for those that have been taken away from there. They are very much allied with horses and asses, but with some twists. One of the most interesting thing is that the accepted scientific name for them is likely erroneous, but that comes later.