Quaggas are an extinct subspecies of zebra.

Quaggas, Latin name equus quagga, lived in sub-Saharan savannah, mostly in South Africa until exterminated in the wild in the 1870s. The double 'g' should be pronounced as a guttural 'ch', with the emphasis on the first syllable, in imitation of its call.

Decline and Fall

Few quaggas were ever subjected to academic study; though both London and Amsterdam zoos exhibited the animal during the late 19th Century. When the quagga mare at Amsterdam Zoo died on 12 August, 1883, it was not immediately realised that the quagga was extinct.

Five photographs of the London Zoo mare are known, all taken by Frederick York and Frank Haes circa 1870 - these are thought to be of the only quagga to be photographed alive.

DNA taken from the skin of a stuffed quagga has been shown to be similar enough to that of the common zebra, Equus burchelli to demonstrate that the quagga was a subspecies of zebra.

In 1987, the Quagga Project Committee was formed in order to recreate the quagga. Not through Jurassic Park¹ cloning, but through selective breeding of the common zebra. The project has achieved 'significant reduction in stripey markings on the body'.

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¹ In the film, scientists clone dinosaurs from the blood of mosquitoes encased in amber.