Although unique foals do inherit some patterns from their parents
Each Zebra’s stripe pattern is unique so how much of the pattern, if anything, is passed down from the parents?
Some scientific sources indicate that there is a degree of inheritance in stripe patterns but it doesn’t seem that it has been researched thoroughly. This aspect is definitely something that I will be making a note of in this project.
Let’s look at an example. In the above picture a foal is walking alongside its mother which gives us a good opportunity to compare them, even if portion of the mother is obscured. At first glance there is a lot of similarity. The pattern on the back is very similar. They have very similar patterns on their rumps and back legs.
In this particular mother/foal combination the differences start to appear on the shoulders and necks. See the photos below.
It is quite obvious that these two have different combinations of “half stripes” and stripes that split or join. There are also subtle differences in the face.
This is an interesting topic and is one that I will come back to when I have done further research.