Yes, the Zorse Is a Real Mix of a Horse and a Zebra

The zorse is just one of several animal hybrids people have succeeded in creating by breeding a zebra stallion with another equine species. Zedonks, zebra mules and zonys/zonies are the product of this pairing, for example.

It's possible but less common to breed a male stallion with a female zebra to produce a zebra hinny, also called a donkra. There's even a name for these zebra-involved hybrids: zebroids.

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Zorses come in all shapes and sizes, but they usually have the body shape and coloring of their mother, only with more stripes. And while their zebra bands aren't full-body, black-and-white numbers, they are prominent and arresting, and usually confined to their necks, legs and rumps.

Also, although horses are generally interested in socializing with humans, zorses are most often standoffish, aggressive, and difficult to train using the same methods you would use with a regular horse.

What's interesting about animal hybrids like the zorse is that, although they have traits of both their parents, some things are different.

For instance, a lot of animal hybrids are infertile, and the zorse is no exception. Infertility comes from the two parent animals having different numbers of chromosomes, which prevents their chromosomes from pairing up correctly during meiosis. Zorses are also prone to dwarfism, and generally run smaller than either of their parent species.

Although human-tinkered animal hybrids seem like a new-fangled thing, they've been around at least since the 19th century. Charles Darwin even wrote about zebroids in his 1868 book "The Variation Of Animals And Plants Under Domestication."

It's likely zebroids were initially bred by colonizers in Africa because they naturally carry more resistance than horses to diseases found only in Africa.

There is also a new puzzle called Zorse, a phrase-guessing game that the New York Times is currently testing out to stand beside their other games like the crossword puzzle and Wordle. To win, players must identify missing letters in a phrase, similar to Wheel of Fortune.

The name Zorse gives away the game's mash-up nature: The gimmick is that each puzzle will be a combination of two phrases, just as a zorse is a mix of a zebra and a horse.

As of October 2024, the game is only available in Canada. However, it is expected to begin beta testing for international users of the NYT Games app in the near future.