Kelly Black, age 10, of Willowdale, Ontario, Canada, for her question:

Do all zebras have stripes?

Nowadays, all the zebras wear startling black and white stripes, though some have more stripes than others. Scientists suspect that their ancestors had fewer stripes or perhaps none at all. The quagga zebra was supposed to resemble the family ancestors. This little brown horse had white stockings and just a few pale stripes over his shoulders. Sad to say, the last quagga on earth was shot down way back in 1861.

All of the pretty striped zebras belong to Africa. Most of them enjoy life on the sunny central and eastern plains. There they share the season's greenery with the long faced grn;, the sharp eyed ostrich and the skyscraper giraffe.

This territory is patrolled by meat eating lions. One of their duties is to keep down the zebra population. Otherwise the zebras might multiply too fast and eat up all the greenery. Their kinfolk would starve. However, there are reasons why it is not so easy for a hungry lioness to catch a zebra for dinner.

One of the reasons, believe it or not, is his handsome striped coat. Out there on the sunny plains, he grazes with a herd of his relatives. You would think that the lion could spot them from afar. Not so. Out there the tall grasses shed long streaky black shadows. And those sassy looking zebra coats blend right into the scenery.

The lioness must creep quite close before she can see them. Meantime the smart zebras have smelled or spotted her. And the frisky herd gallops away in a cloud of dust. As a rule, the lions manage to catch barely enough zebras to feed their families.

Obviously, all the zebras need stripes to hide them until the last minute. However, their territory stretches through thousands of miles, and here and there the background scenery changes. So in different parts of Africa we find zebras with slightly different stripes. These various zebra types are named for the naturalists who first described them.

The most common type is Burchell's zebra, who roams in herds through the vast central and eastern plains. His black and white stripes are fairly wide, and they reach down his sides to circle under his tummy. In the female, often the stripes bend to form a Y shaped saddle over her back.

The Burchell types change somewhat as we go south. For example, some have striped thighs and some have striped stockings down to their dainty hooves. Some have wider white stripes with tan shadow stripes down the center.

Grant's zebra lives farther north around Ethiopia. His stripes are vivid black and white, but sometimes he has no mane. Grevy's zebra roams through the straggly woodlands of Kenya. He has extra large ears and lots of very skinny stripes. This fellow is the stripiest of all the striped zebras.