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Animal Themes
Mammals
Grasslands

Zebras

Zebras
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 4 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   9.05

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    grazing, therefore, social, entire, species, reunite, conservation, mare, unique, stallion, adult, travels, male, savannahs, order, task

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Zebras   
1     Zebras are horses in black and white stripes! They are very sociable animals. They like to travel in large herds that are made up of many small family units.
 
2     A zebra family usually consists of one stallion (male zebra), several mares (female zebras), and their foals (young zebras). Because a herd may have hundreds of zebras, staying close to its family can be a very challenging task for a zebra. Scientists believe that a zebra can recognize its family members by their unique black-and-white stripe patterns. Therefore, even if a foal wanders off and gets mixed up with other zebra families, it can always reunite with its own family by looking for special fur designs that its siblings or parents have.
 
3     Within a zebra family, a strict order of seniority is carefully observed. This social hierarchy is most noticeable when a zebra family travels across savannahs in search of food or water. The oldest mare walks in the first place. Behind her are her foals, and then the second oldest mare and her foals, and then the third oldest mare and her foals, and so forth. There is only a single stallion dominating an entire zebra family, and he is always the last in line.

Paragraphs 4 to 5:
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