LEAVING ASIDE THEIR evolutionary import, there's a simpler reason hybrids fascinate. Some are astonishingly beautiful.

In Ramona, California, Nancy Nunke raises zorses and zonkeys at a six-acre spread called the Spots 'N Stripes Ranch, which mainly exists to breed zebras and miniature horses for show and for sale to private animal owners. After I pass through a security gate, Nunke greets me at her house and then points out her one zorse and two zonkeys, who are peeping at us from nearby corrals.

Nunke introduces me to her zorse, Zantazia, which, at seven months old, is still a zoal. This delicate creature has a sorrel coat, a horse's long and thin face, and white stripes on her head, neck, torso, and legs. The offspring of a quarter horse mother and a Grevy's zebra father, she may end up standing taller than both.

I reach out to stroke Zantazia's neck, but she backs away. Nunke says zorses and zonkeys are friendly, but they have to set the pace. "It's like if you walked down Main Street and someone threw his arms around you," she says. "You'd say, 'Hey, buddy, back off.' "

Nunke has a soft spot for all "stripeys," which she thinks are more playful and affectionate than horses. "Horses will rub on you because they have an itch," she says. "A zebra will rub on you because he's your best friend." Zorses inherit the souls of zebras, she adds. "If they have one stripe, you train them exactly like you train a zebra. The z is totally in them."

We walk over to meet the zonkey brothers, Zane and Zebediah, who have donkey faces and ears, caramel coats, and a dizzying array of black lines. "They're the most striped zonkies in the world," Nunke boasts. "What a good boy," she says, patting Zane's striped neck. Zane brays, and he looks so much like a zebra that his hee-haw startles me.

Nunke says some purists believe it's wrong to breed hybrids, that they pollute the natural order. "Here's how I feel about it," she tells me, a bit of swagger in her voice. "Whatever God didn't want to cross, he didn't make genetically capable of crossing."