Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Quagga: Half Zebra half horse



Above is my illustration for an extinct African subspecies of the zebra, called the Quagga.
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[as taken from wikipedia] The quagga (Equus quagga quagga) is an extinct subspecies of the plains zebra,[2] which was once found in great numbers inSouth Africa's Cape Province and the southern part of the Orange Free State. It was distinguished from other zebras by having the usual vivid marks on the front part of the body only. In the mid-section, the stripes faded and the dark, inter-stripe spaces became wider, and the rear parts were a plain brown. The name comes from a Khoikhoi word for zebra and is onomatopoeic, being said to resemble the quagga's call. The only quagga to have been photographed alive was a mare at the Zoological Society of London's Zooin Regent's Park in 1870.



The quagga was the first extinct creature to have its DNA studied.


Above is a perserved Quagga foal hide.


After the very close relationship between the quagga and surviving zebras was discovered, the Quagga Project was started by Reinhold Rau (1932–2006) in South Africa to recreate the quagga by selective breeding from plains zebra stock, with the eventual aim of reintroducing them to the wild.[3]

Here's some zebra mixes that are alive today: