"The father of 'Eclyse' is a horse from Italy, where the crossbreed filly was born in 2006, her mother is a zebra from the Safari park."
miscegenation
Tags: mutants
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10 Responses:
The patterning is interesting. The sharp delineations between the zebra and horse patterning suggest a mosaic rather than a simple hybrid, but I guess that the pigmentation could be on the X chromosome and it's just a result of inactivation (the process by which female mammals turn off one X chromosome in each cell in order to avoid overexpression - it's the same reason tortoiseshell cats can only be female). I suspect something odd has gone on here.
The coloration of that animal isn't all that odd, given its parents.
Many horses, even solid colored horses, carry genes for spotted patterns (especially the large patterns found on paints and pintos). What you're seeing there is a paint/pinto with zebra striping in the "dark" color, and no zebra striping in the white, as it is lower in pigment (the skin under the white is typically pink, while the skin under the darker color, even if it's palomino, is typically a dark grey).
Its not a mosaic - its just spotted, like a pinto, with a pattern instead of a solid color in the spots.
I knew a horse somewhat colored like this one - it was white/flea-bitten gray spotted, and you could only really tell when it was wet and the black skin under the flea-bitten gray parts showed through.
all grey horses have black skin, and are genetically quite different from the sabino type markings of this halfhorse.
Blah! If you'll read my comment, you'll see I wasn't talking about a grey horse - I was talking about a horse that appeared white but was actually a mix of two different colors, and was not a zebra but had a pattern in her spots instead of a solid color, unlike most paints, and like the hobra in the picture. The pattern in question was flea bitten grey, and yes the skin in those areas was black. But she was a paint and had patches of pure white fur, with pink skin underneath, and patches of flea bitten grey, with black skin underneath. Hence my saying you could only see it when she was wet.
I was NOT saying she was a zebra!
When I hear hoof beats now I'm going to think, "hobra".
not a hobra, a zorse!
stupid sexy zebra.
i like ho-bra. ;)
... and now with a new mental image of the word, i kinda like it too! *bow chicka bowwow*
Looks like they're trying to bring back the Quagga.