#618: Quagga

The Quagga was a subspecies of plains zebra. He was characterised by his bi-cokloured body, with the forequaters being striped and the hindquarters a solid brown. His range was the lowest tip of South Africa, where he favoured open grasslands. When the Dutch colonised South Africa, he became a target of the hunters for his meat and his skin. Already occuring across a fairly limited range, he would also have competed with introduced livestock for food. By the 1850s, numbers had declined drastically and the last wild population was eliminated in the late1870s, with the last wild individual dying in 1878.

However, that does not necessarily mean the end for this unique equine. DNA from skins has been analysed and comparisons made to the still extant Burchell's zebra and in 1987, selective breeding of these began. Whilst it is impossible to recreate the Quagga exactly as it was, it is possible that a very similar zebra will once again roam the grasslands of South Africa.