quagga - Attempted revival, Quagga hybrids and similar animals, Trivia

An extinct zebra native to S Africa (Equus quagga); stripes only on head and shoulders; brown body, white legs and tail; last individual died in Amsterdam zoo in 1883.

iQuagga
Conservation status
Extinct  (1883)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Perissodactyla Family: Equidae Genus: Equus Subgenus: Hippotigris Species: E. quagga Subspecies: E. quagga
Trinomial name
Equus quagga quagga Boddaert, 1785

The quagga is an extinct subspecies of the plains zebra, which was once found in great numbers in South Africa's Cape Province and the southern part of the Orange Free State. Recent genetic research at the Smithsonian Institution has demonstrated that the quagga was in fact not a separate species at all, but diverged from the extremely variable plains zebra, Equus burchelli, between 120,000 and 290,000 years ago, and suggests that it should be named Equus burchelli quagga. quagga quagga for the quagga and E.

Attempted revival

After the very close relationship between the quagga and surviving zebras was discovered, the Quagga Project was started by Reinhold Rau in South Africa to recreate the quagga by selective breeding from plains zebra stock, with the eventual aim of reintroducing them to the wild. In early 2006, it was reported that the third and fourth generations of the project have produced animals which look very much like the depictions and preserved specimens of the quagga, though whether looks alone are enough to declare that this project has produced a true "re-creation" of the original quagga is controversial.

Quagga hybrids and similar animals

Zebras have been cross-bred to other equines such as donkeys and horses.

Trivia

"Quagga" is the code name for the software that runs the Free Software Foundation Free Software Directory, due to its phonetic awkwardness on par with GNU.