Zonkeys

I have always wondered why Zonkeys look so much like Somali wild …donkeys… (forum filters the real name of that animal) I found out that Somali wild donkeys with the black and white leg stripes are thought to be the wild animal that domestic donkeys were bred from. That would explain why Zonkeys have such nice bright leg stripes; maybe leg stripes are still somewhere in a domestic donkey’s DNA and it readily expresses itself when they are hybridized.
-And to immediately shoot down my own theory, that would mean if leg stripes where recessive, normal donkeys should still occasionally show the black and white leg stripes.They never do – far as I know.
Just rambling here…

I am glad you like the Zonkey unicorn! I thought he was really cute too. I am planning to paint some other Zonkeys soon as we get extra castings. I did paint a Zonkey hippogriff. This hybridizing is getting intense!

?

Zebras have leg stripes.

Don’t know about dun, but with my small amount of genetics learnin’ , I think I remember that the tendency for certain markings -and the coat color can be many separate genes,(though I know they are often inherited as a package) , donkeys may have the latent trait for bold leg stripes but without the color genes to make them show up. Donkeys do sometimes have soft dun-type leg stripes, don’t they? I am just making this up, but it sounds plausible… like everything I make up.
I wonder if a dun horse bred to a zebra is stripier than an solid colored horse/ zebra cross?

Sounds like a new Poad color–Zebra Chestnut!!

Those are northern zebras, by the way; the farther south you go the fewer leg stripes they have, with the (original) extreme southern type being the quagga, with no leg stripes at all.