#spotted zebra

[kommiehunter]

Tira, The Spotted Zebra

🦓

[blondebrainpowered]

Spotted zebra Equus quagga boehmi with a rare genetic disorder at Masai Mara in Kenya. October 15, 2019

Photographer: Ashish Parmar

[elijones94]

🦓 Tira, the rare spotted zebra 🦓

[or-fi-s]

Commission for Caudlewag

[harvestheart]

Also on the Massai Mara Reserve, a spotted zebra foal born in spring 2019.

[simplycute]

ashishparmarphotography The rarest Zebra in the world

[rjzimmerman]

The eye-catching animal, seen in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve, likely has a genetic mutation called pseudomelanism.

Tira, the spotted zebra foal, may be more suspectible to biting flies without the zebra's trademark stripes. PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANK LIU.

Excerpt from this National Geographic story:

Talk about a horse of another color—a zebra foal with a dark coat and white polka dots has been spotted in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve.

Photographer Frank Liu was on the search for rhinos recently when he noticed the eye-catching plains zebra, likely about a week old. “At first glance he looked like a different species altogether,” Liu says. Antony Tira, a Maasai guide who first spotted the foal, named him Tira.

Zebra stripes are as unique as fingerprints, but Tira’s odd coloration could be the first recorded observation in the Masai Mara, according to Liu. Similar foals have been seen in Botswana’s Okavango Delta.

Tira and these other foals have a condition called pseudomelanism, a rare genetic mutation in which animals display some sort of abnormality in their stripe pattern, says Ren Larison, a biologist studying the evolution of zebra stripes at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Tira walks through Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve with her mother in a recent photograph. PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANK LIU

[maddaddy316]