About the Plains Zebra Drawing
I have seen Plains Zebras many times during my trips to East and southern Africa, and they remain inseparable in my mind from the immense grasslands of the Serengeti. For me, the zebra is almost a symbol of those plains and of the extraordinary diversity and abundance of large mammals they continue to support.
One of my most memorable experiences occurred in the Ndutu region of Tanzania, just outside Serengeti National Park, during the calving season. We camped there for two days and the plains were filled with newborn zebras and wildebeest. Seeing so much new life at once was remarkable, although it was impossible not to wonder how many of those young animals would survive the predators, droughts, disease, river crossings, and other challenges of their first year.
Plains Zebras (Equus quagga) occur across much of eastern and southern Africa. They are highly social grazers that commonly live in family groups consisting of a stallion, several mares, and their young, while other males form bachelor groups. These smaller units may gather into much larger herds, particularly where food and water are abundant or when the animals join seasonal migrations.
Zebras often travel and feed alongside wildebeest. The two species use grasslands somewhat differently, with zebras able to crop taller and coarser grasses that wildebeest subsequently graze more closely. Their association may also provide additional protection because more animals are available to detect approaching predators.
Each zebra possesses a unique pattern of stripes. The precise evolutionary functions of those stripes continue to be studied, but recent evidence indicates that they can reduce attacks by biting flies. Whatever their original function, the contrasting patterns make zebras among the most visually distinctive mammals on Earth, particularly when the stripes of many animals merge and shift within a moving herd.
The annual movement of zebras, wildebeest, gazelles, and other grazing mammals through the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem is one of the world’s greatest remaining large-mammal migrations. The herds follow seasonal rainfall and the growth of new grass, moving from the southern calving grounds around Ndutu toward the western and northern Serengeti and into Kenya’s Maasai Mara before eventually returning south.
I was fortunate to visit the Mara River in southern Kenya, although I was not there during a major crossing. I did, however, see the enormous Nile Crocodiles for which the river is famous. During the migration, zebras and wildebeest entering the water face strong currents, steep banks, crowding, drowning, and crocodiles waiting along the crossing routes.
The only historical landscape that seems even remotely comparable to me in its abundance of large grazing mammals is the North American Great Plains before the destruction of its great bison herds. Tens of millions of bison once moved across that landscape, but large-scale commercial hunting, expanding railroads, settler expansion, and policies intended in part to undermine Indigenous nations reduced them to fewer than a thousand by the end of the nineteenth century. The Serengeti offers a rare opportunity to glimpse something of what a vast grassland ecosystem can look like when immense herds are still able to move across it.
Plains Zebras remain widely distributed, but their populations are decreasing, and the species is classified as Near Threatened. Habitat loss, competition with livestock, hunting, drought, fencing, and other barriers that prevent animals from reaching seasonal grazing and water can all affect local populations and disrupt traditional movements.
In Serengeti, I focused closely on the zebra’s face, erect mane, alert ear, and flowing pattern of black-and-white stripes. The deep black background removes the surrounding landscape, yet the title connects this individual animal to the immense plains, migrating herds, newborn foals, predators, and seasonal cycles that I remember from Africa.
Serengeti is a graphite wildlife drawing of a Plains Zebra (Equus quagga) by Michael E. Dorcas for Tantilla Art.