• bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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    5 months ago

    What distinguishes zebras from horses is that zebras live in anonymous herds. That is, they like to clump together to ward off predators, but they don’t know or like each other. They are not a uniform group with a leader. Horses on the other hand do have authorities and followers among them. And humans can hijack the role of the leader.

    CGPGrey: The Real Reason We Don’t Ride Zebras (6:23)

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      zebras live in anonymous herds. That is, they like to clump together to ward off predators, but they don’t know or like each other.

      Zebra’s don’t like anyone, and they’re not afraid to show it. Repeatedly.

    • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      What distinguishes zebras from horses is that zebras live in anonymous herds.

      says a lot about 4chan, the penny arcade GIFT theory, etc

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        With how Facebook forces real names, the idea that being anonymous has any influence where or not someone is a fuckwad had been debunked.

        • AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@piefed.social
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          5 months ago

          It’s not the anonimity that makes people fuckwads. It’s the lack of immediate consequences. A fuckwad won’t get a punch in the face for what they say on facebook, hence they feel they can say anything and be a fuckwad.

          • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            “Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it”, Mike Tyson

            Regardless of how you feel about Tyson, Truth is Truth.

        • tempest@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          In a large enough group there is still anonymity even if your face and name are on there.

      • Sundiata@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        4chan blocks commenting with vpn, and /pol/ is a federal honeypot waiting for the next entraptment.

        not so anonymous

    • stenAanden@feddit.dk
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      5 months ago

      This makes me wonder… How much of what he says is just conjecture? Do we ACTUALLY know with good certainty that zebras can’t be domesticated due to their nature? Or is it just a hypothesis/theory that has reached widespread popularity?

      I have heard that zebras (along with other African animals) can’t be domesticated because they have evolved to live among humans, when we were still man-apes. But that maybe that’s just conjecture too.

      Note how he have no sources in his video or description. And his comparison to chickens, cows, sheep and cats don’t seem to make much sense. The relation between humans and chickens/cows/sheep is markedly different from that of horses. Do wild fowl really have family structures? Cats don’t yet they are still docile among humans.

      Edit: even if we really can’t do we know the reason why?

        • stenAanden@feddit.dk
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          5 months ago

          But what if we spent longer time doing it? Like centuries, like with most other domesticated animals.

          • stray@pawb.social
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            5 months ago

            I’m not sure why you’ve been downvoted because you absolutely could domesticate them given sufficient time and consistent selective breeding. You could turn them into crabs if you wanted to. The trouble is that they don’t have a very social disposition, so no one is motivated to dedicating their entire bloodline to the project. Most domestication happened kind of on accident as we developed symbiotic or exploitative relationships with various species.

          • HertzDentalBar
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            5 months ago

            Domesticated animals generally start out already being somewhat agreeable. Like dogs hung around us, and work in a pack mentality, horses same thing, cats same thing. That’s why we could domesticate racoons or some rodents if we wanted to.

            Zebras are assholes and hate everyone

            • prole
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              5 months ago

              cats same thing

              I think cats are unique in that they domesticated themselves

              • HertzDentalBar
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                5 months ago

                Basically yea, but it still has a bit of the same where we had what they wanted and they were agreeable enough we worked with them. If anything they domesticated us 😂

            • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
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              5 months ago

              Foxes didn’t have many domesticatable features, but it just took the Soviets 40 years or so to domesticate them. It really might just be nobody spent 100 years trying.

              • HertzDentalBar
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                5 months ago

                Foxes can be agreeable creatures to begin with. Look at the amount of videos of people who have adopted foxes.

              • HertzDentalBar
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                5 months ago

                Depends on the wolf. I know people who have both owned and rehabilitated wolves, some are just big babies… Babies that will absolutely ruin you if you piss it off 😂

              • psud@aussie.zone
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                5 months ago

                They were friendly to the other wolves in their pack. Now we’ve turned that so dogs see us as their pack

      • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        I saw a historic photo in a magazine once, where some European colonial officers tried to tame and ride zebras

  • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The Cow says: Moo!

    The Horse says: Neigh!

    The Zebra says: I ain’t nobody’s bitch!

  • X@piefed.world
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    5 months ago

    “Motherfucker, do you see the way I look?! Shit ain’t for the insta, that’s for sure. I’m quite visible to you so you have a long enough time to be getting far the fuck away from me.”

    • underisk@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      I thought the stripes were actually camouflage and they’re just monochromatic because the things they’re hiding from have poor color vision.

      • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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        5 months ago

        Latest theory I heard was:

        A 2014 study found a correlation between striping and overlap with horse and tsetse fly populations and activity. Other studies have found that zebras are rarely targeted by these insect species. Caro and colleagues (2019) studied captive zebras and horses and observed that neither could deter flies from a distance, but zebra stripes kept flies from landing, both on zebras and horses dressed in zebra print coats. […] White or light stripes painted on dark bodies have also been found to reduce fly irritations in both cattle and humans.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra

      • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        The truth is we don’t actually know because the zebras don’t want us to:

        So, the question why zebras have stripes have proven very difficult and not without risks – Stephen Cobb has been bitten in the arm and admitted to hospital twice. Despite the extra vigour of recent work, the answer remains inconclusive.

  • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    There’s some accounts throughout history, but humans generally leave them alone. They’re aggressive creatures surrounded by even more aggressive killing machines. So it stands to reason that an animal in that environment would be pretty tough to tame.

    • ForeverComical@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      It has to do with social structures from what I read a while ago.

      Horses have a hierarchical structure and zebras don’t.

    • HejMedDig@feddit.dk
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      5 months ago

      What you don’t spot on that picture is the front “zebra” in the back, is a painted horse. Apparently that helped the zebras remain more calm

      • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I actually figured he must have had a more experienced horse along with the zebras to sort of lead the carriage. I know its done with dog sleighs, but not sure about horses.

  • stenAanden@feddit.dk
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    5 months ago

    I honestly wonder if we actually COULD domesticate zebras but it would taking centuries or millennia. Just like other domesticated species.

    • Chais@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      No. Zebras don’t have a herd hierarchy we can exploit. With horses you pick out the lead horse, tame it and boom, the whole herd follows you.
      With zebras you get one zebra, if you’re very lucky. More likely you’ll get kicked and bitten.

    • oatscoop@midwest.social
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      5 months ago

      Selective breeding is no different than natural evolution in how drastically it can change an organism given enough time and the right selections for “fitness”.

      So you could produce a domesticated, tame zebra – but waiting on and favoring the right mutations would take a very long time and be prohibitively expensive. It’s possible, but not realistically feasible.

  • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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    5 months ago

    In the 1980s, in Tijuana, tourist kids could ride horses painted like zebras.

    • SPRUNT@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Spoken like someone who knows nothing about zebras. They’re not striped because of camouflage; that’s their prison uniform, and they are all violent offenders.

      • Denjin@feddit.uk
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        5 months ago

        There’s not many animals that haven’t been domesticated because they’re cunts. And zebras are one.

      • Eddyzh@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Hm it’s not a fake picture apparently but the situation is definitely not as implied.

        Thanks for sharing!

        • pageflight@piefed.social
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          5 months ago

          Did expect: self defense. Did not expect: eventually the croc wins, also all the other zebras just walking by.

          • Eddyzh@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            About the walking by, nice example how safety in numbers works. One can cover the others.

      • redbrick@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        crocs are damn scary. They once ripped off an oar from our boat…freaking scary ass moment. Dad chased it off with the other oar. If Jurassic Park were real, crocs are a glimpse of that.