There are 3 living species of Zebra: The Grevy's, the Mt Zebra, and the Plains Zebra
The Grevy's are a stand alone species, with no subspecies. And it's illegal to hunt them. They have a lot of thin stripes and their rump can look like a human fingerprint.
The Mt Zebra has two subspecies.
The Hartmann's Mt Zebra, which is primarily found in Namibia, but they are in SA as well.
The Cape Mt Zebra is a bit smaller, lives primarily in the western half of South Africa.
There are a couple of ways to tell the difference between the two.
Both have dew laps on their throats, have a brownish, almost dusty, coloring on their face. Stripes don't go all the way to the belly, no shadow stripes, short tail,
distinctive zig zag pattern on the rump.
The Plains Zebra, depends on which book you read or who you talk to. Has at least five subspecies, some say six, and there is debate on the seventh.
There's a tendency to classify all zebra other than Mt Zebra as a Burchell's Zebra. But a lot of people will be shocked to learn that there is a strong belief that the Bruchell's went extinct in 1910. That's one of those discussions that could go on for hours and probably end in a physical fight. Let's not go there in this discussion, lets just say you can Google it and read both sides of the story, then make up your own mind. It gets really confusing.
The Burchell's and the Chapman's are the two that can get mixed in together quite easily. It would probably take a DNA test to really tell the difference on some cases where the markings are too close to call.
The Crawshay's is fairly easy to identify. It has a distinct pattern and has a smaller home range compared to the others.
Then there's the Bohm's, the Selous, and the Grant's. And I'm still confused on the Maneless Zebra. Is it another name for the Selous?
I'm still trying to research and learn how to better tell the difference by pictures alone. But it's not an exact science and even the 'experts' can't seem to agree.
I should mention the one truly extinct species, the Quagga, which may no longer be extinct as they are trying to recreate it in a special breeding project in South Africa.
They say it was killed off by settlers and it was apparently easy to do as they had little fear of man. Very docile the research papers say. The Quagga were very oddly marked and there's no way to confuse them with the other zebras.
How's that for a quick tutoral on the Zebra? I am by no means an expert on Zebra. And if there's anything I've learned by reading the research papers that I have found online, the Plains Zebra, especially the ones with the shadow stripes, are a huge gray area, open for plenty of opinions and discussion.
