Claudia Foresee, age 13, of Montgomery, Alabama, for her questions

Is a zebra black with white stripes?

Or is this cute little wild horse white with black stripes? You can't tell which is the background color by looking at him because his black stripes and white stripes are about equal. You might suppose that nobody could figure out which is his background color. But you would be wrong. And the story of how the experts finally solved this age old problem is just as interesting as the answer.

If we wish to be fussy, we can insist that a zebra has neither black stripes nor white stripes. When you take a keen  eyed look at his velvety coat, you see that his dark stripes are very, very dark brown and his pale stripes are yellowish buff. In any case, from a short distance he becomes a bouncy little wild horse with dizzy black and¬white stripes    or is it white and black stripes?

To solve the problem, zoologists investigated his out of town kinfolk and delved into the history of his family tree. The modern zebras belong to Africa, where the vivid sunshine casts midnight shadows among the grasses, shrubs and trees. Lions are very fond of zebra meat    and this is lion country. Those vivid stripes blend with the vivid sunshine and shadow streaks of the scenery and from a distance it takes a sharp eyed lady lion to spot a herd of zebras.

Naturally the zebras voted most likely to survive are the ones whose stripes blend best with the scenery. And naturally only those that survive long enough to grow up have children. And children, in the animal world as elswhere, tend to resemble their parents. It follows then, that in time a herd of zebras came to blend more and more successfully with the natural surroundings.

For example, the zebras of Kenya wear very narrow stripes. They live in brushland, where long, pale and straggly grasses cast long thin shadows on the landscape. Farther south, the zebras have wider stripes that blend with the bushes and shrubs. Forest zebras wear still wider stripes. They blend with streaks of shadow and sunshine filtering down through the boughs.

In bygone days, a zebra cousin called the quagga roamed through much of South Africa. He was a buff colored wild horse, with just a few darker stripes across his head and neck. Scientists suspect he was quite like the remote ancestors of the entire zebra family. In this case, the family's basic background color was pale buff and no doubt the dark stripes came later. Hence, the gaudy zebra must be a blond animal with brunette stripes.

The early settlers of South Africa found herds of quagga roaming the open country. They hunted these native horses for food and used their hides to make ropes and reins and even sacks to hold grain. Their numbers decreased and a century ago these drably dressed zebra cousins became extinct. The last quagga, sad to say, died in 1883    a captive in the London Zoo.