I didn't watch the video, but coming into this thread, my prior knowledge is that zebras' backs can't take the weight of a human. Horses couldn't, in ancient times. That's why the ancient (read: prior to 1500 BC or earlier) civilizations had so many chariots--the horses weren't meant for riding, they were meant for pulling. Horseback riding is a 'modern' invention; the spine of an ancient horse couldn't take the direct weight of a human. Between 800-500 BC, the ancient Chinese and Indus Valley civs began to raise horses with strong enough backs for carrying men. Zebras don't have the benefit of three thousand years of selective breeding and domestication to strengthen their backs. source: i looked it up while typing this.
Ah, I just noticed this. Oops. What the guy in the video said seems correct for the most part, although I’m a little picky about some of the smaller points he made. I’ll try to make what I was trying to say before more clear here with this extra bit of context. You could probably apply similar training methods to a zebra that you would a stallion. You wouldn’t get the same results, but you probably could end up riding it. You could teach it to do the most basic aspects of riding like walking, stopping, turning, and trotting. I don’t know if you’d really be able to do much else, though, and you’d need to be really conscious of the animals limitations in attention span, physicality, and discipline. But it’s possible. There are plenty of professional riders who are used to working around these problems with aggressive, hard-to-handle horses while weighing as little as 90 pounds (jockeys). And since zebras are on average the same size and weight as ponies, who can carry an average maximum of 140 pounds, it’s incorrect to assume that you’d “break their back” by sitting on them. With the right combination between rider, trainer, and zebra (because not all of them will act as badly as others), it doesn’t seem too unrealistic to me. As for domesticating the whole species, I think it depends on your take on evolution/artificial selection. He said that unless a species had the 6 traits he mentioned, that species would likely never be able to be domesticated. But I think those traits were actually traits that defined an already-domesticated species, not a species that had the potential to be domesticated. Through artificial selection, dogs evolved from a common ancestor they shared with wolves. That ancestor most likely didn’t have the traits he listed, but that didn’t keep them from eventually developing those traits through human influence. Reckon, dogs aren’t considered the same species as that ancestor, so maybe any domesticated descendants we create through the artificial selection of zebras wouldn’t technically be “zebras”. That depends on what you consider makes the difference between two species, one of which descended from the other.
I think the closest alternative to horses in terms of speed and endurance would be camels. Yaks can also be ridden, and ostriches. I've also seen a bison being ridden, but they can be quite moody. Stallions generally require more experienced handlers, but they're absolutely manageable and great to work with.
If you're up for the challenge, then they can definitely be great to work with I generalized when talking about them to make my point, but they do have the potential to be incredible, both in how you interact/work with them and in their own personalities. Holy cow, there's this stallion pony at my ranch named Napoleon and he is the sweetest little guy. But when you turn him out in a round pen, he's the funniest and craziest pony ever -his hind legs will go over his head when he bucks, which is interesting to see... he's one of the few stallions I've seen that aren't as aggressive as they are just... energetic
Wow guys, thanks for all the answers, this is being super educational! On the topic of zebras, I was looking for alternatives to horses in a made-up place in the north temperate region, so perhaps not the best climate for our striped friends. Also, since the topic of time period has been brought up, I forgot to mention this is for a bronze age setting.
As pointed out by others, neither were horses to begin with. Our relationship with horses doesn't begin as a "ride'um, cowboy" paradigm, but as a "pull that cart, sledge, other thing" moment, and also as a food animal, though modern Western culture typically says no to that idea. (Incidentally, you can still buy horse meat for human consumption in many areas of Europe). He also makes a comment about the size of a zebra being too small, but I have to sadly disagree with that point. Should not and can not mean different things, and I think he's really speaking to should not. In Puerto Rico, horses are not much bigger than the zebras he pictures being ridden by people, and when I see full-grown, well-fed men riding these little things up my street (a daily event) it makes me wince. I'm like, dude, you weigh more than the fuqing horse. Get off. But I literally see it on a daily basis. I don't pretend to know about horse breeds or if these horses are a particular breed, or just runty, but they are much smaller than what one thinks of as a horse in the U.S. If one were to engage in the domestication of zebras, clearly breeding for size and improved strength would be a starting point. The most damning trait, imo, remains their temperament. Horses and zebras may be close enough to give a viable offspring, but that's where it stops. Fertile offspring are next to impossible. Horses and zebras are only just close enough to have babies that live, and they typically suffer from forms of dysplasia and dwarfism. You really couldn't successfully introduce horse traits into a zebra population that continued to propagate. Horses have 64 chromosomes. A zebra has between 32 and 46. They aren't as close as their morphology might lead one to believe, so just going off of horse knowledge doesn't cut it. They clearly evolved in a very different environment than steppe horses, with different selection pressures that have pushed different behavioral traits to the surface. The simple fact that we never bothered domesticating them even though they evolved in the same environment as humans, right alongside us, in Africa, would seem to be the clearest evidence that they just aren't worth the effort. To take another example (this one having nothing to do with domestication) a jaguar is a big cat, and so is a lion, and if we engage them in that way we see two creatures with a clear relationship to one another, but these two examples from the same tribe have vastly different behavioral profiles as regards their social programming, hunting style, environment, etc. To say "well, they're both cats, so why not" is a profound oversimplification of the question.
According to Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, zebras are vicious. They'll bite and hold on with their teeth, and they kick to maim and kill, not warn. Makes sense since they've evolved alongside lions, not been selectively bred by humans. If you're Colonel Roosevelt, you can ride anything you damn well please. Mere humans need not apply, however.
