by Maria C Collins

Created on: January 06, 2010   Last Updated: February 04, 2010

The quagga is an extinct mammal. Zoologists had known it was a type of wild horse but  modern gene mapping techniques revealed it was a type of Zebra, most closely related to the Plains zebras in South Africa. In fact, many scientists call the quagga a sub-species of the Plains zebra. Research in 2005 shows that the quagga, probably descended, from an isolated population of South African Plains zebras somewhere between 120,000 and 290,000 years ago.

The quagga’s range was between the Orange and Vaal rivers, on grassland plains in South Africa. The quagga’s markings differed from zebras. Zebras are striped all over but the quagga had stripes like a zebra, but brown and cream, only on the head and neck. The stripes gradually fading across shoulders to a dark cream and towards the quagga’s rear the coat was a brown colour. Zoologists think that the difference in markings between zebra and quagga is because the quagga made a rapid adaptation to living in more open terrain.

Quagga, like other types of zebra, would have been difficult to domesticate. People have tried to train zebra for riding and carriage work but most of their attempts failed because zebra have a very unpredictable nature and tend to panic when stressed. Some people managed to train zebra notably Lord Rothschild, a zoological collector, rode around London in a zebra drawn carriage. Captain Horace Hayes in his 1893 book “Points of the Horse”, stated that the quagga could be trained to the saddle but it is unlikely that he was speaking from experience since many experts say that the quagga bone structure meant that it could not carry an adult human being.  The reason that people wanted to train zebra for riding and carriage work is because they were, unlike horses, immune to tsetse fly bites and the fatal diseases caused by them. Since quagga are descended from plains zebra it is likely that they too had this immunity.

Quagga’s are a sad example of those animals hunted to extinction by man. White settlers, wrongly, believed the quagga competed with their cattle for grazing. Quagga hides made beautiful soft leather and their meat was considered a delicacy. The last wild quagga was killed in the 1870’s. The last quagga in the World died in Amsterdam zoo in 1883.  The only existing photograph of a live quagga was that of a mare photographed at London zoo, home of the London zoological society, in Regent’s Park, London

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