A zonkey born in northern Mexico is considered a rare hybrid which combines both a donkey and a zebra.
In a related report by The Inquisitr , a zonkey born in Italy was also considered quite a surprise because the two parents should not have been able to get together:
“Owner Serena Aglietti built a fence to separate the two animals. But somehow, in the golden light of a field in Florence, love flowered. [The zonkey named] Ippo is the only one of his kind in Italy.”
Zoo officials say the zonkey born on Monday has been named Khumba . The little zonkey so far has the features of a donkey when it comes to the upper body but you can’t miss the black and white striped legs that mark the mother as a zebra named Rayas. The father is a blue-eyed dwarf albino donkey named Ignacio, which probably means the little Zhumba zonkey will literally be “cuter” than usual. The pregnancy apparently was not planned based upon a breeding program, although the zoo notes the parents had been spending a lot of time together.
The zonkey, which is sometimes referred to as zedonks or zebroids , are considered a rare sight in zoos, never mind the wild. If a male donkey pairs with a female zebra tjem that foal is a donkra. Zonkeys are usually a cross between a male zebra and a female donkey but these hybrid animals are usually unable to reproduce further due to the incompatibility of their parents’ chromosomes.
The reason for this is that even though all these animals belong to the same genus, Equus, they happen to have differing chromosomes numbers. For example, donkeys have 62 chromosomes, horses have 64, and zebras have 44, but there’s also other oddballs like the Hartman’s mountain zebra, which has only 32 chromosomes. If the father is a horse and the mother is a zebra then this baby animal is called a hebra. Even other inter-species hybrids like mules and hinnies (the combination of a stallion and a jennet) are usually sterile.
There’s also other species that can produce offspring even when most people would not expect that to happen. For example, almost everyone knows about ligers now because of Napoleon Dynamite, but as it turns out not all the ligers and tigons are sterile. In addition, both jaglions (a jaguar and lion hybrid) and jagupards (jaguars and leopards) have been bred in zoos. Bottlenose dolphins and false killer whales can produce a wholphin, although that’s only been observed once.
What do you think about the baby zonkey named Khumba?