Saturday, January 24, 2015

SAD QUAGGA TALES





First pic: this Quagga mare died in 1878 in a zoo, the only living quagga ever photographed. The very last of her kind ever died in an Amsterdam zoo in 1883. When DNA studies of unfortunate taxidermed specimens were studied, tests pointed to the extinct Quagga having been a subspecies of Plains Zebras, still thankfully around. The Quagga Project, spearheaded by South African zoologist Reinhold Rau then began selective breeding to bring out the recessive traits of Plains Zebras commensurate with Quagga coloring, and are on their 5th generation (second pic.) These animals live in an assortment of game parks, no culling. 

I hope they succeed and show the world the magnificence of quagga-like zebras, and how we should do anything to avoid future extinctions which deplete our earth's treasures.

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