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Cape mountain zebra foals generally move away from their maternal herds sometime between the ages of 13 and 37 months. Mares give birth to one foal at a time, for about 3 years baby foals gets weaned onto solid forage. In this they are opposed by the dominant stallion of the group. Bachelor males live in separate groups, and mature bachelors attempt to capture young mares to establish a harem. Mountain zebras do not aggregate into large herds like plains zebras they form small family groups consisting of a single stallion and one to five mares, together with their recent offspring.
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However, they generally inhabited poorly productive land and were nowhere really numerous in comparison to those species of zebras or antelope that inhabited the plains, for example. Historically, mountain zebras could be found across the entire length of the escarpments along the west coast of southern Africa and in the fold mountain region in the south. This was not always so, and the current situation is a result of their populations being fragmented when hunters exterminated them throughout the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. The Cape mountain zebra and Hartmann's mountain zebra are now allopatric, meaning that their present ranges do not overlap, which prevents them from crossbreeding. When no surface water is available due to drought, they commonly dig for ground water in dry river beds. Their preferred diet is tufted grass, but in times of shortage, they browse, eating bark, twigs, leaves, buds, fruit, and roots. They prefer slopes and plateaus as high as 2,000 m (6,600 ft) above sea level, although they do migrate lower during winter. Mountain zebras live in hot, dry, rocky, mountainous and hilly habitats. Mountain zebras are found on mountain slopes, open grasslands, woodlands, and areas with sufficient vegetation, but their preferred habitat is mountainous terrain, especially escarpment with a diversity of grass species. Hartmann's zebra is on average slightly larger than the Cape mountain zebra. Groves and Bell found that Cape mountain zebras exhibit sexual dimorphism, females being larger than males, whereas Hartmann's mountain zebras do not. Wither height ranges from 1.16 to 1.5 m (3 ft 10 in to 4 ft 11 in). Īdult mountain zebras have a head-and-body length of 2.1 to 2.6 m (6 ft 11 in to 8 ft 6 in) and a tail of 40 to 55 cm (16 to 22 in) long. In the Cape mountain zebra, the ground colour is effectively white, but the ground colour in Hartmann's zebra is slightly buff. The whole body is striped except for the belly. Like all extant zebras, mountain zebras are boldly striped in black or dark brown, and no two individuals look exactly alike. The mountain zebra has a dewlap, which is more conspicuous in E. Hartmann's mountain zebra resting, showing its characteristic essentially unbarred belly This is consistent with the third edition of Mammal Species of the World (2005), which lists the mountain zebra as a single species ( Equus zebra) with two subspecies. They concluded that the Cape mountain zebra and Hartmann's mountain zebra should remain as subspecies. However, in a sexual genetic study that included 295 mountain zebra specimens, Moodley and Harley (2005) found nothing to support the separation of the two mountain zebra populations into separate species. They concluded that the Cape mountain zebra ( Equus zebra zebra) and Hartmann's mountain zebra ( Equus zebra hartmannea) are distinct, and suggested that the two would be better classified as separate species, Equus zebra and Equus hartmannae. Bell investigated the taxonomy of the zebras (genus Equus, subgenus Hippotigris). South-western Angola and western Namibia. Western and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa.
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The mountain zebra comprises two subspecies: