Were Zebras on Noah’s Ark?

(3 Minute Read. 6Apr2022)

This dazzling jigsaw puzzle below got me thinking about zebras. It is a 669-piece wooden jigsaw puzzle by Nautilus Puzzles costing $140.

After thinking about Noah, his Ark, and the Great Flood for weeks, pondering the zebra picture prompted this obvious question:

Were zebras on the Ark?

Zebras

The zebra is a wild horse living in the savannas, open forests, and mountains of Africa. A zebra’s most intriguing and distinctive feature is its stripes.

Are zebras black with white stripes or are they white with black stripes?

The answer is: Neither!

A popular children’s riddle also leads one astray.
Q: What is black and white and red all over?
A: A zebra with a sunburn!

Zebra mother and foal

The hairless skin of a zebra is black. The stripes are either black fur or white fur growing out of that black skin. The fur prevents sunburns.

Zebra stripes are unique to each animal. No two zebras have the exact same pattern. At birth, zebra stripes are reddish-brown. They gradually darken to black as the animal matures.

A herd of zebras is called a dazzle, possibly because you are dazzled by looking at a herd of striped zebras.

The black and white stripes are one of the Great Creator‘s many camouflage patterns for animals. The zebra’s wavy stripes blend with the tall wavy grasses of the plains to make them difficult to see. Likewise zebra stripes make them hard to see in the dim light of dawn and dusk when they seek water. The stripes also make it hard to distinguish a single animal from the herd as their stripes blend together making it difficult for a predator to target a single zebra.

Zebra Dazzle in Samburu National Reserve

Lions love zebra steaks! But lions are color blind, so a dazzle of zebras visually confuses them as everything is black and white.

The average lifespan of a wild zebra is 25 years. Zebras are herbivores, eating grass and various plants. This gradually wears down their teeth, but their teeth never stop growing.

To help zebras survive predatory lions, hyenas, cheetahs, and wild dogs, the Great Creator has gifted zebras with excellent hearing and eyesight as well as speed. They can flee predators as fast as 40 mph. Even newborn foals can escape predators as they can stand within six minutes of birth and can run in 40 minutes.

Zebras in Botswana
How many do you see?

Were Zebras on the Ark?

The zebra is part of the horse kind, along with horses and donkeys. They are in the Equidae family in today’s taxonomic classification scheme.

A zorse is the offspring of a zebra and horse. A zonkey or zedonk is the offspring of a zebra and a donkey. I have personally seen both of these mixes in a zoo.

The horse kind has diversified throughout the roughly 45 centuries following Noah’s Flood. No new genetic information has been produced. But the existing genetic information in the Ark’s horse pair has been sorted, rearranged, shuffled, and sometimes even lost. Nothing new has been produced. It is only a repackaging of the already existing genetic information. This has produced many variants of the horse kind — both extinct and extant.

The Great Creator, the God of the Bible, programmed tremendous genetic diversity in the horse kind. He provided for its multi-varied expressions through the rearrangement of chromosomes via complex cellular mechanisms that man still does not yet fully understand.

Noah probably did not have a zebra as we know it today on the Ark. He took a pair of the horse kind with robust genetic diversity. All horses, zebras, and donkeys that we have today are descended from that pair on Noah’s Ark.

Questions to Ponder

1. Is it still okay for artwork to portray zebras on the Ark?
2. Can you think of an interesting way for art to represent the genetically complex “Horse Kind” that was on Noah’s Ark?

Share your thoughts on these questions in the comments below. It could encourage or help another reader.

For Christ and His Kingdom. Soli Deo Gloria. Alere Flammam Veritatis.

This is the 11th in a series of articles on Noah. This Noah Series will suggest answers to many of the questions believers and skeptics have about Noah, Noah’s Ark, and Noah’s Flood.
Read the prequels:
1. Think You Know Noah?
2. Did Jesus Think Noah Was Real?
3. How Long Did It Take Noah to Build the Ark?
4. Could Noah Build the Ark in 75 Years?
5. How Big Was Noah’s Ark?
6. Were Dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark?
7. Could Noah Fit All the Animals on the Ark?
8. What Was Noah’s Flood Like?
9. Was Noah’s Flood Global or Local?
10. Life on Noah’s Ark

Read the sequel:
12. Evidence of Noah’s Flood: Canyons

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©William T. Pelletier, Ph.D.
“contending earnestly for the faith”
“destroying speculations against the knowledge of God”
“for the defense of the gospel”
(Jude 1:3; 2 Cor 10:5; Phil 1:16)
Wednesday April 6, 2022 A.D.

Then God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. You shall make a window for the ark, and finish it to a cubit from the top; and set the door of the ark in the side of it; you shall make it with lower, second, and third decks. Behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall perish.
(Genesis 6:13-17)

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