We see horses, donkeys, mules, and even llamas become core transportation mediums of many thriving civilizations in history.
Zebras, on the other hand, only seem to have made it to being nice attractions in Zoos. Granted, I know almost nothing about Zebras.
Out of curiosity, have they been domesticated and widely used by societies in the past? If not, is there something about them that made them particularly hard to domesticate?
hi! there have been a couple of other posts on zebras; catch up on previous discussions here
Zebras have, on occasion, been used to pull vehicles: http://www.urban75.org/brixton/history/zebra-taxi-cab.html I suspect these were more in the nature of publicity stunts, rather than regular use.
No. There were 0 animals domesticated in sub-Saharan Africa. Edit: 0 pack animals.
It should be noted, however, that there have been very recent attempts at domesticating Zebras by modern animal breeders and geneticists that failed. If modern science can't domesticate the Zebra, you can't really blame Africans for not doing it. Zebras have a tendency of biting people and not letting go. Very irritable animals. They actually injure more zookeepers than tigers. And they're very hard to lasso -- even for rodeo winning cowboys. I believe their high level of awareness had something to do with being on the plains and in the open against so many aggressive predators.