Equus quagga quagga
The quaga or quagga (Equus quagga quagga) is an extinct subspecies of common zebra (Equus quagga). Unlike the existing subspecies today, the quagmire was a zebra with reddish-brown fur that was unstriped on its back and hindquarters, and dotted with black stripes on its face, neck, sides, and mane. The belly and legs were entirely white. These great differences in coloration led to its being initially described (1788) as a separate species.
The quagas formed herds in the south-eastern part of present-day South Africa, as well as in the middle and southern part of the Orange Free State, being especially abundant in the Cape province. Its name comes from the language of the Khoi (Hottentots) and has an onomatopoeic origin: it is an adaptation of the characteristic noise of the quaga itself.
The quagmire is the only extinct animal whose DNA has been fully extracted, sequenced, and studied. Thanks to this, the laboratories of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington were finally able to prove beyond any doubt that the quaga was a subspecies of the plains zebra.
Extinction
Quagas have been hunted since the arrival of the first Dutch settlers for their meat and skin. One of the oldest scientific references of the time about the killing of these animals is that of Edwards who, in 1758, described their characteristics. According to this author, “the meat of the zebras was used to feed the Hottentot laborers who worked in the fields, and their skins were used to make bags. And such was the number of cuagas and to such an extent did these utilitarian butcher shops reach, that the hunters were ordered to recover the bullets, extracting them from the bodies of the dead animals, fearing that the ammunition would run out. In the middle of the 19th century, the colonization of the interior caused by the exodus of the Boers dissatisfied with English sovereignty over the colony led to the slaughter of thousands of cattle as part of a general plan to exterminate wild animals in the area. The objective of this policy was to allocate the grazing lands of the large herds to domestic cattle. The population of these animals in the wild declined rapidly, to the point that the species was already extinct in South Africa by 1870. In 1871, one of the few captive specimens died at the Paris Zoo, followed by that at the London Zoo., in 1872, and that of Berlin, in 1875. That same year it was already difficult to find a single quaga skin in Africa. On August 12, 1883, the last quagmire, which lived in captivity at the Artis Royal Zoo in Amsterdam (Netherlands), died and that is how the subspecies became extinct definitively.
Cloning
The availability of DNA in perfect conditions makes the theoretical cloning of this subspecies possible, although no experiments have been carried out in this regard.
On the other hand, the so-called Quagga Project began working in 1987 on the recreation of quaggas from plains zebras from the Etosha National Park in Namibia, through a selective breeding process that enhances the qualities supposedly most similar to the extinct quaga in each generation. The project has been running since then in Vrolijkheid, near Robertson (South Africa).
In popular culture
- It refers to the cuaga in chapter 14, "The female of the species", of the third season of the series Elementaryin which the central character, Sherlock Holmes, discovers a copy created through cloning.
- It is mentioned in Jurassic Park and The lost world Michael Crichton.
- It is mentioned in Aircraft July Verne.
- It is mentioned in The mysterious island July Verne
- An incident involving a herd of rags is reported in chapter 5 The mines of King Solomon from H. Rider Haggard.
- Cuaga Anónima is one of the animals used to represent anonymous profiles in Google Docs.