Dreaming about a zebra: stripes, savanna, a foal, a running zebra

What dreaming about a zebra usually points to

Dream interpretation is not prediction and not diagnosis. This article separates what sleep research observes from what popular interpretation associates with the theme, always saying which is which.

Dreaming about a zebra is not a warning of betrayal, of a bad surprise or of luck. The scene tends to show up when a person is dealing with contrasts: two options that seem opposite, a situation that is neither all good nor all bad, or the feeling of being in the middle of something that changes fast. The stripes, alternating black and white, are the detail memory holds on to most.

The zebra is a close relative of the horse, and many people dream of a mix of the two. The general meaning of horses in dreams is in dreaming about a horse. Here the focus is on what the zebra adds: the herd, the stripes and wild life.

Read also: Dreaming about a giraffe and Dreaming about an elephant.

Where the zebra in the dream comes from

Zebras do not live in the wild in Brazil, and almost everyone there knows them from zoos, documentaries and children's books. According to the continuity hypothesis, tested by Michael Schredl and Friedrich Hofmann in 2003, that is enough: a safari video watched before bed, a story read to your child, a striped T-shirt hanging on the clothesline.

The word also circulates in everyday Brazilian life. "Deu zebra" (literally, "it came out zebra") is a Brazilian expression for an unexpected result, an upset; according to the most common story, it was born in soccer. A zebra dream in the week of a turnaround at work or in the championship may be the brain playing with the word.

The contrast of the stripes helps fix the image. And the color of dreams has its own research: in 2008, Eva Murzyn compared reports from younger and older adults and found more dreams in shades of gray among those who had access to black-and-white media before color media. To learn more, read the article on whether we dream in color or in black and white.

Sources: Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003; Murzyn, Do we only dream in colour?, Consciousness and Cognition, 2008.

Zebra scenes and what they usually come with

The animal's biology helps read the scenes. The stripe pattern is unique to each zebra, like a fingerprint. In the first days of life, the mother usually keeps the foal a little apart from the herd, so it learns to recognize her by her voice, her smell and her stripes. When a predator approaches, the group runs together. One of the hypotheses studied is that stripes in motion confuse the hunter; another, that they keep biting flies away.

If in the dream it was you who were running, fleeing from someone, read dreaming that you are being chased.

See also: Dreaming about a big fish and Dreaming about a flying cockroach.

When a zebra dream calls for care

Almost always, the zebra appears in calm or curious dreams. Sometimes, though, it comes along with its most famous predator, and the scene turns into a hunt; in that case, it is worth reading dreaming about a lion. If dreams of escape and attack repeat several times a week, rob you of sleep or leave you afraid to go to bed, talk to a health professional: frequent nightmares have treatment. See how to have fewer nightmares.

Source: Morgenthaler and colleagues, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2018.

The zebra for Freud, Jung and faith

In Freud's psychoanalysis. Freud did not write about zebras, but he described a mechanism that suits them. He showed that dreams create composite structures, joining features of two things into a new image, in the same way we imagine a centaur or a dragon. The difference, according to him, is that in the dream the mixture follows an element the dreamer's thoughts have in common. A zebra that turns into a horse invites the question: what do these two images have in common in your life right now?

In Jung's psychology. Jung's psychology gives great weight to pairs of opposites and to the effort of making them live together, a theme that runs through Man and His Symbols. In that key, an animal that carries black and white on the same body can be read as opposite sides of a person that do not need to cancel each other out.

In symbols and faith. The zebra does not appear in the Bible. The closest relative mentioned is the wild ass, the onager: in Job 39, it lives free in the wilderness and "scorneth the multitude of the city", an image of freedom remembered by those who read the dream through faith. In Africa, the zebra is the national animal of Botswana and appears on the country's coat of arms.

Bringing both readings together. Research shows where the zebra came from; psychology and faith ask what, in your life, needs to live alongside its opposite. Write down how you felt when you woke up.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols.

The zebra in the dream book

O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book by L. P. Baçan, has an entry for the zebra, and it is not very encouraging: in life, foolishness; in love, dangers close by. The book does not distinguish the foal from the herd, nor the standing zebra from the running one. This is folk tradition, not prediction.

Freud compared this method to treating the dream as a conglomerate of rocks, in which each piece is analyzed on its own. And he pointed out that everything depends on the reliability of the key, the dream book, with no guarantee at all that it is right.

Sources: L. P. Baçan, O Livro dos Sonhos, 2014; Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900.

What folk reading links to the zebra

In Brazilian folk reading, strongly influenced by the expression "deu zebra", dreaming about a zebra is a sign of surprise, of something that goes off script. The stripes are usually read as balance between opposites; the free zebra, as freedom; the foal with its mother, as family and protection; the running herd, as unity in the face of a problem. These are readings from tradition, which change from person to person, and not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.