Planning to paint stripes on your horse this Halloween? While it might be fun to pretend that we’re riding a zebra, the reality is that this horse cousin just isn’t meant for riding.

While there are a few scattered instances throughout history of people successfully training zebras to ride and pull carriages, they represent the exception, rather than the rule.

“Zebras are truly wild animals, and most of them would rather kill themselves or you than let you try to domesticate them,” said John Tolley, DVM, senior large animal practitioner at Bakersfield Veterinary Hospital, in Bakersfield, California. “Even the movie zebras we work with out here in California are pretty tough to manage. They have a fierce self-protection instinct that’s nearly impossible to overcome.”

But their stripes have attracted the attention of many horse lovers. So in an effort to get the horse domestication and the zebra’s colorful coat, some individuals bred a “zorse”—half horse, half