Most zebra births take place during rainy months when food is plentiful and herds pause their migrations. Zebra females about to birth depart the herd to locate a sheltered place in taller, thicker vegetation. The many harems of a migratory zebra herd typically graze a short distance away. When curious adults, including the harem stallion, approach a mother and her newborn foal, she becomes alarmed. The mare quickly blocks her baby from viewing the visitor's stripes. This task can be exhausting. For a chance at life, a foal must imprint its mother’s stripe pattern in its brain with invincible accuracy. There is no time to waste. The baby's window of receptivity closes within two or three days. Nor is there room for error. Hanging over all zebra births is the reality that 20 or more harems comprising a single herd cannot remain stationary for long. If stripe imprinting is interrupted, a foal is unable to mingle freely in a large migrating herd or cling to its mother in dangerous moments. Harems ostracize a confused and disoriented foal, rebuffing its cries. Wandering helplessly, the infant quickly succumbs to starvation or attack by predators. Nature’s law of survival is relentlessly efficient, and apart from random luck, demands invincible accuracy. Human beings pondering the desperate urgency of the bonding imperative may see it as a cruel lottery. Nevertheless, a certain inevitability—one may call it perspective—asserts itself. Nature’s ecological machinery is inexorable. It is what it is. Nevertheless, the reality is that most zebra foals mature successfully to master the dramatic imperatives—food, survival and procreation. It’s not unreasonable to think that the phenomenon of zebra stripe imprinting shines a light on the vital necessity of meaningful and enduring social bonds between human beings, especially familial bonds shared by parents and their children. Father Barker +++