I like that the author doesn't embarrass himself by attempting to define a Zebra by what it does.
On a more serious note: philosophers who use a process-based ontology/metaphysics would be a little more careful with words: you're defined by your position in given historical processes. Some of these, of course, are initiated by you, hence 'what you do.'
So in the case of a zebra, it's a zebra because it's genesis lies in a historical process: zebras giving birth. If you have two parents who are zebras, then you're a zebra. The first zebras became zebras once they are unable to sexually reproduce with another species, I forget the exact biology term here. For another example, I'm a citizen of the United States because I'm part of a historical process by which people are born in a particular space, both geographical and political, over a certain time period. I don't possess some sort of intrinsic US-ian property.
If you're interested in this kind of thing, Whitehead, Deleuze, and more recently, de Landa (who I adapted the zebra example from) are all materialists who replace identity with process.
I think "speciation" is the word you're looking for. No idea why I remember that!
I feel like there was another related terms, specifically about the point where reproduction can't happen. "genesis" was in there somewhere, I thought. Regardless, thanks.
Deleuze and de Landa were my primary inspirations during graduate architecture school. I wrote about how such thinking might be incorporated into a web design.[1]
[1]: http://kimble.co/2012/bottom-up-web-design-and-the-materiali...
You know, something about de Landa bothers me a bit, maybe you can chew on this and sometime, we'll discuss it: he wants to "de-postmodernize Deleueze" (even though he's careful that Deleuze isn't pomo, just that he uses dense words), but I'm not entirely sure that you can really separate, say, A Thousand Plateaus from the performative properties of the text. It seems strange to me that a materialist would want to remove the ideas from the primary material that they came from.
That said, he does a damn good job of making it a bit more accessible, especially to technologists.
I don't have anything specific yet, though: what would you suggest?