Zebra black and white at birth. Plains and mountain zebra foals are protected by their mothers, as well as the head stallion and the other mares in their group. Grévy's zebra foals have only their mother as a regular protector, since, as noted above, Grévy's zebra groups often disband after a few months. Attempts have been made to train zebras for riding, since they have better resistance than horses to African diseases. While occasionally successful, most of these attempts failed due to the zebra's more unpredictable nature and tendency to panic under stress. For this reason, zebra-mules or zebroids (crosses between
Zebra mussel Zebra mussel The zebra mussel ("Dreissena polymorpha") is a small freshwater mussel. This species was originally native to the lakes of southern Russia and Ukraine. However, the zebra mussel has been accidentally introduced to numerous other areas, and has become an invasive species in many countries worldwide. Since the 1980s, they have invaded the Great Lakes and the Hudson River. The species was first described in 1769 by the German zoologist Peter Simon Pallas in the Ural, Volga, and Dnieper rivers. Zebra mussels get their name from a striped pattern commonly seen on their shells, though it is not universally