Long ago, In a land far away, where the sun was warm and the animals were all friends, where the long grass waved and the stars winked, an old man named Makena (which means delighted) sat painting. He was painting the likeness of the Zaldi, a herd of beautiful white horses. As Makena slaved away, bringing his painting to life with gentle strokes, Kureshtar, a particularly curious bird decided to come and see what the artist was doing. He saw the picture and immediately screamed with laughter. The bird called his friend Cavallo, one of the horses, over to see the sight. He too thought the picture was very funny. He was laughing so hard that he knocked over a bucket of black paint with his hoof. The paint splattered everywhere! Because of the hot sun, it soon dried in streaks all over the Cavallo’s body. To his dismay, he could not get the paint off. He tried EVERYTHING, but it was useless! The paint was there for good, so he turned to another tactic. He walked to the herd, with his head high and a prance in his step.
As he approached them he said, “Look what Makena did for me. Now, I will always be known as the most beautiful Zaldi!”
All the other horses turned to look, and they got the surprise of their life. But as they saw how proud their friend looked, they became quite jealous. They begged him to come with them and ask the painter if he would do the same for them. He agreed willingly, and off they went. Now, Makena had spent his life studying the languages of different animals, so he understood the reason for their visit and went to work at once, giving all the horses stripes. The line grew daily, as different herds joined. Makena sat for days, and he soon found that he was running out of black paint. He started using it sparingly and mixing in mud. As a result, some of the horses ended up with stripes that were more brown than black.

No matter the color, the horses were all as happy as clams with their new coats, and they were even happier when they found that their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren were born with stripes too! Somewhere along the line, the word Zaldi started to change with the language (as you must know, all languages evolve over time) eventually, Zaldi was no longer the name for the beautiful horses, but Zebra, which means “Stripe” in horse language.