Shortly after being born, this zebra foal already has to fight for its life when a rival stallion appears. Trying to eliminate a baby that isn’t his, the stallion attacks, while the mother does everything she can to protect her newborn. A harsh reality of nature that one of the guests, pregnant at the time, found too heartbreaking to watch.
For those wondering: in a zebra herd, the structure is a stallion with a harem of females. The lead stallion has breeding rights to the herd. If a new stallion takes over a herd and some of the mares are pregnant, those foals won't have his genetics, and the females won't be ready to breed again for quite a while if they're taking care of those foals.
Rather than wait for the females to raise offspring that aren't his, it's faster to kill the young, prompting the mares to go back into estrus and breed with the current stallion. This phenomenon occurs in some species of monkeys, lions, and several other animals worldwide.
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