Quagga
Tagged: animal, animals, catEquus quagga
A form of the common zebra, the quagga used to roam the South African grasslands, but during the 19th century was hunted to extinction for its meat and hide. The common zebra occurs as various localized and distinct varieties, and the one in southern Africa was sufficiently distinct to have been considered a separate species. It was known as the quagga, a name that was based on the loud barking-coughing sound that all zebras make. Like the common zebra, quaggas formed large herds to exploit the vast grasslands and to achieve safety in numbers when attacked by predators. It is said that they preferred to spend the night in areas of short grass where they could not be easily ambushed. In good feeding areas the herds would stay in the same region throughout the year. However, where the grazing was poor, the quagga migrated seasonally to find better feeding places.
In the quagga (above) the striping that is characteristic of all zebras was confined to the head, neck, and forequarters. Breeding experiments to produce an animal resembling the extinct quagga have included a cross between a mule and a zebra, to produce a quagga” hybrid (right). However, this animal lacks the striped head and neck of the quagga and is gray, whereas the quagga was generally brown.
The Road to Extinction
From about 1700 settlement in South Africa by Europeans increased substantially. By the late 19th century most of the land occupied by quaggas had been brought into use for grazing livestock and for farming. The new settlers used to shoot quaggas for sport in far greater numbers than had ever been possible by the native people. The quaggas were killed by farmers as a convenient source of meat, and their skins also provided a source of strong leather, which was used for making robust bags. They were easy animals to hunt from horseback, since the open grassland offered nowhere to hide or escape. Hunting caused disruption of the quagga herds. Although there may have been many surviving quaggas as late as the 1860s, they were scattered into small groups, which substantially reduced their breeding success. As the older animals died, there were too few offspring to replace them, and the last wild quagga was probably killed in about 1878. A few quaggas had been kept in zoos, the last individual dying in Amsterdam on August 12, 1883. The only photographs of a living quagga are of the female that lived at the London Zoo from 1851 to 1872. Today there is only one quagga left on the entire continent of Africa-a preserved foal in the Cape Town Museum. About 22 stuffed and mounted specimens of adult quaggas are scattered among museums elsewhere.
Quagga (Bonte quagga, Burchell’s zebra)
Equus quagga
- Family: Equidae
- World population: 0 (Extinct)
- Distribution: Formerly Cape Province and parts of Orange Free State, South Africa
- Habitat: Dry temperate grasslands
- Size: Length head/body: about 6 ft (2 m); tail: nearly 24 in (50-60 cm); height at shoulder: 4-5 ft (1.3-1.4 m). Weight: about 450 lb (200 kg); adult males can be up to about 650 lb (300 kg)
- Form: Brown zebra in which the head, neck, and forequarters had brown and cream stripes, but the hind quarters were solid brown. As in other zebras, each individual had a slightly different pattern
- Diet: Coarse grasses
- Breeding: Single foal born probably after a gestation of about 1 year. Independent at 6-8 months and probably capable of breeding at 2-3 years. Life span may have been up to 40 years, as in common zebras today
- Related endangered species: Mountain zebra (Equus zebra); Grevy’s zebra (E. grevyi); African wild ass (E. africanus); Asiatic wild ass (E. hemionus)
Re-Creating the Quagga
It has been suggested that genetic material from some of the museum specimens might be used to clone a “re-created” quagga, but that will only be possible if the DNA has remained suitably preserved (tanning the skins, for example, which is part of the preservation process, harms DNA irrevocably). Experimental cross-breeding projects and the selective breeding of zebras with different coat patterns have also produced
animals that look very similar to quaggas.
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