Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
By 1799
Primary Source Reference:
Natural History Lecture No. 10 (1799), Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
Additional Source Text:
"I saw one belonging to the queen of England at the stables belonging to the Buckingam House 1769 – it eat hay and oats; was dangerous for any person to go near it; was excessively ill natured, and I have understood that it never became tame, or useful."
In his "Walk through the Philad[elphi]a Museum" (1805-1806), p. 40, Peale wrote: "That beautiful striped Skin belonged to a Zebra. They [are] natives of the southern parts of Africa, where they range in their native wildness and cannot be tamed to become useful to man."
Notes:
The Peale Museum had the skin of one of the three extant species: the Grévy's zebra (Equus grevyi), the mountain zebra (E. zebra), and the plains zebra (E. quagga). Zebras share the genus Equus with horses and asses, the three groups being the only living members of the family Equidae.
In his Natural History Lecture No. 10 Peale gave a lenghty description of the zebra drawn from other authorities.
Specimen Type:
Skins
Peale's Common Name:
Zebra
Current Common Name:
Zebra
