QUAGGA (Equus quagga quagga), subspecies of plains zebra, native to South Africa, characterized by a unique pattern of stripes on the front of its body that gradually faded to a brownish color in the rear. The name “quagga” is derived from a Hottentot word that imitates the sound the animal made. The quagga became extinct in the late nineteenth century owing to human causes such as hunting and habitat infringement. Here is the Veld, a 1948 novel by Attilio Gatti, follows the journey of a lone surviving quagga in the 1930s, although the timeline is fictionalized; in reality, the last wild quagga was shot in the late 1870s, and the last captive quagga died in an Amsterdam zoo in 1883.
In 1987 a South African organization called the Quagga Project was formed in an effort to revive the species’ genetic strain through selective breed- ing with plains zebras that display similar characteristics, but these efforts have not successfully recreated the exact ap pearance of the original quagga. Proj- ect leader Dr. Eric Harley has theorized that with each new breeding group, the quagga’s distinct characteristics will gradually become more visible. Over the course of more than five generations the organization has noted a progressive reduction in striping and an increase in the brown background color. These selectively bred quaggas are called “rau quaggas,” and as of 2022, there were approximately ten living on the project reserve.