Grevy’s zebras—loiborkoram in the Samburu language—are massive. At up to almost a thousand pounds, they are the largest wild animals in the horse family. Their prominent ears appear rounded at a distance, and their stripes are finer than those on a regular old plains zebra. “They are absolutely stunning animals,” says Belinda Low Mackey, a cofounder of the Nairobi-based Grevy’s Zebra Trust.

They are also highly endangered. Just 2,000 adults remain in the wild, and their range has shrunk from a significant swathe of the horn of Africa to a few places in northern Kenya and just over the border into Ethiopia.

Hunting in the 20^th century and ongoing competition for scarce food with livestock that also graze