Once this number reaches 50 there are plans for the herd to live together in one reserve. What is a quagga? Do these animals near Cape Town deserve the name quagga?
Please do join in using the comments section below! Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page. What Is A Quagga? What did a quagga look like? Discover more of our wildlife posts…. The discussion has focused on cloning well-known extinct animals like the passenger pigeon and woolly mammoth.
And the project is well underway. Can an animal be bred back into existence? And even if it can, is this a wise use of conservation dollars and effort, or just a gimmick? As a child, I remember staring at a picture of a quagga in a book of extinct animals. It appeared, to my eye, as a zebra without stripes.
A fantastic beast. That impression was only partly true. The quagga did have some striping but only on its head, neck and front part of the body. Much of the body was brown, with the legs and belly being an unstriped white. This animal once roamed the Karoo Desert and other arid regions of southern Africa, presumably in large herds.
This region of South Africa began being settled for agriculture by European colonists quite early; you can visit vineyards today that began in the late s. Those European farmers saw the large, grazing ungulates of the Cape as competition, and began eliminating them with deadly effectiveness.
The great herds disappeared. Some animals, such as bontebok and black wildebeest, were reduced to just dozens of animals. Its demise was swift and poorly documented. The last-known individual died in an Amsterdam Zoo in , but no one even realized it at the time. Laws were passed in South Africa protecting the quagga from hunting in , three years after its extinction. As such, it achieved an almost-mythical status among naturalists.
An animal that disappeared, in recent times, with only the merest of traces. For years, one of the few things we really knew about the quagga is that it would never roam the veldt again. That is simple, because if it is established that two former species names in fact refer to one and the same species, then the older of the two names takes precedence over the younger. Equus quagga —, Equus burchelli — Among those scientists who considered the Quagga as having been the southern-most subspecies of the Plains Zebra, were Otto Antonius, zoo director in Vienna and the two brothers, Heinz and Lutz Heck, both zoo directors, the former at Munich and the latter at Berlin, Germany.
The breeding experiments of the Heck brothers, largely with domestic horses and cattle, are well known. The aim was to breed animals which resemble the wild ancestors of both the domestic horse and domestic cattle.
During this tour he discussed the feasibility of attempting to re-breed the Quagga with Dr. Haltenorth, mammalogist, at Munich, Germany. Haltenorth saw merits in such a plan and expressed his surprise that such a programme had not already been started in South Africa.
Having critically examined 21 of the 23 preserved Quaggas, and being familiar with the high degree of variation in the Plains Zebra populations inhabiting the Etosha National Park in Namibia, the Kruger National Park, as well as parks in Zululand and Swaziland, Rau decided to work towards the implementation of a Quagga re-breeding programme.
Contact was made in with zoologists and Park authorities, in the hope of stimulating interest in the project. Reactions to his proposals were on the whole negative, which was not surprising, considering that most English language scientific literature considered the Quagga as a separate species, a view which, if correct, would render any attempt to re-breed the Quagga a futile exercise.
However, Rau did not abandon his re-breeding proposal, as he considered the Quagga to be a subspecies of the Plains Zebra. Comparison of these sequences with those of the Plains Zebra, demonstrated their close affinity, at least with reference to the sequenced genes, indicating that the Quagga was a subspecies of the Plains Zebra. Then came another fortunate event. The retired veterinarian, Dr.
Warning of Somerset West, contacted Rau during the latter part of He was an expert in animal husbandry and had been associated in horse and cattle breeding for more than 50 years in Germany and Namibia. He was a friend of Prof. Gradually a more positive attitude was taken towards the proposed Quagga re-breeding programme, as the DNA examination results appeared in publications from onward. Influential persons became involved and during March the project committee was formed. During March nine zebras, out of approximately 2 , were selected and captured at the Etosha National Park.
The first foal was born on the 9th of December During the successive years, further selected breeding stock taken from Etosha and Zululand have been added. The first foal of the second offspring generation F2 generation was born in February Reproductive maturity is reached only at two to three years in mares and four to five years in stallions.
The increased number of zebras led to a proportionate increase in the cost of feeding them, so much so that the limited funds of the project became stretched to the point where the breeding venue at Vrolijkheid had to be abandoned. In October six zebras were moved nearer Cape Town onto land which had sufficient natural grazing. As the new site proved to be a success, the remaining zebras from Vrolijkheid were moved there and to two additional new sites in In July Quagga Project breeding groups are living at 11 localities near Cape Town, with a total of presently 83 zebras.
In addition there are 6 good stallions at 4 different places, held in reserve for replacement, should the need arise. There have been some losses, due to old age, illness or injury.
Some of the less suitable offspring have been sold. It is expected that this continuous selective breeding will, with successive generations, reduce the high degree of individual variation, both in colour and in extent of striping, which are characteristics of the southern Plains Zebra. It was as simple as that. Like other animal species that disappeared in Africa during the 19th century, the quagga was hunted to extinction.
It was the age of the great white hunter , when privileged Europeans with too much time on their hands and too much firepower at their disposal roamed Africa, killing indiscriminately.
Settlers in the new continent also hunted them.
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