A baby animal named Zippy is only the second Zonki living in the UK.

The word “zonki” refers to the offspring of a zebra mother and a donkey father. There are very few such hybrids, since in natural conditions donkeys and zebras do not occur together, and in zoos these species are usually kept separately from each other.

Zippy was born on October 2, 2018 at Christine Turner’s small farm in South Barrow, Somerset.

His mother was a six-year-old zebra named Ziggy, and his father was one of nine donkeys living on the farm.

Kristin was very worried when Ziggy finally got pregnant and when the birth date approached, she very often went to the zebra in the paddock and checked how things were going and whether the birth had begun.

And then one morning she woke up and came to the field, she saw Ziggy with a small cub next to her. The cub had gray donkey skin and donkey ears, but legs striped like a zebra.

Now Christine doesn’t know how to treat little Zippy like a donkey or a zebra. Still, these animals have completely different characters. Donkeys are easily tamed and socially adapted to humans, but it is very difficult to tame a zebra.

The hybrid of a male donkey and a female Zebra is called with the term zonki. While the offspring of a male donkey and a female Zebra is called zebroid. Zebroids have been known since 19th century.