…and it is one of my FAVORITE extinct animals. When I was in kindergarten, my teacher would set me down in her lap everyday after school and teach me to read for a little while. She had these cool posters…11x14 inches or so…of animals that she used along with the obligatory " Run, Pug! Run! " material that was common at the time. I distinctly remember that one of the poster things was of a Quagga , although for the life of me I don't know why. I guess it was just the featured extinct animal in the series. I just thought they looked cool.
Most of the text on this one was ripped word for word from the book 'Vanished Species' by David Day…the 1989 revision published by Gallery books. Can I do that?
"Probably no family of animals has had so great a totemistic and economic significance for human civilization as the horse. Our responses to the horse are, and always have been, enormously complex. On the one hand it stands, mythically, for power, grace, and, above all, freedom. On the other, it has, through history, carried Mans armies, pulled Mans plows and drudged in Mans mines. Then there are the images of the horse as the most obedient and faithful of friends; and as the four-legged embodiment of luck, whose fickle performances at the racetrack have ruined many a good mans life. And the revulsion, almost universal except in the Low Countries, at the thought of eating horse meat involves a curious and contradictory blend of contempt and sentimental reverence.
Partly these responses reflect the horse’s own variability. Not only have men developed horses of every conceivable size and shape but, in the wild, horses and asses have adapted to almost every climate and terrain. The Quagga of South Africa ( Equus burchelli quagga ) is probably the best known of all the wild horses, having attracted the dubious glamour that extinction always seems to confer.
When first discovered, however, the Quagga was simply regarded as one zebra among many and was often thought to be the female of the Burchell Zebra. The Hottentots, who gave the name ‘Quahah’ in imitation of the animal’s shrill, neighing cry, gave the Burchell the same name. So it would be inaccurate to claim that the Quagga was particularly singled out for hunting or exploitation . Far more significant to its extinction was its geographic restriction to the old Cape Colony veldt and, in lesser numbers, to the Orange Free State. In the Cape it was, in fact, the only zebra on the plains. Thus the colonizing Boers found it the most obvious source of food for their native servants and of hides for domestic use and export; and they shot Quaggas in their thousands. As the Boers moved north they exploited the more numerous species of zebra in the same way but with less drastic consequences.
The Quagga was basically a brown, rather than a striped, zebra with white legs and tail. It had no distinct markings on the hind quarters and only vague mottlings on its back. So its only striped parts were its head and neck. In conformation it was far more horse-like than any of the other zebras which, with the exception of the Burchells, are essentially large-headed, donkey-like creatures.
The Quagga’s mane was also distinctive, being described by an early observer as ‘curious, appearing as if trimmed by art’. It was an immensely energetic and highly-strung animal, the stallions being given to occasional fits of rage. In fact the London Zoo’s one chance of breeding Quaggas in the 1860’s was foiled when the stallion beat itself to death against the wall of its enclosure.
In the early days of settlement, the Boers of Cape Colony kept tame Quaggas as guards to their domestic stock at night, knowing that their ‘watchdogs’ would not only raise the alarm but very probably attack any intruder - man or beast -viciously. It is, perhaps, strange that such animals could be tamed, but in England in the 1830’s there was a vogue for Quaggas as harness animals and Sheriff Parkins could be seen around London seated behind a pair of the exotic imports. They were said to have much better ‘mouths’ for harness than Burchell’s Zebras which were also fashionable between the shafts for a time. Whether the harness Quaggas were gelded or not is not documented, but it would seem likely.
In its natural state the quagga formed what has been called a ‘triple alliance’, typical of the southern zebras, for defense against predators. It was nearly always to be found in the company of Wildebeest (White-tailed Gnus) or hartebeest, and ostriches. This has been explained, hypothetically, as a synthesis of varied talents: the birds’ eyesight, the antelopes’ powers of smell, and the Quaggas’ acute hearing. Certainly such a group of animals, grazing as they did on the open plains, would have been well protected against surprise by any natural predators and their chief enemy, the lion, probably caught very few healthy adult Quaggas.
But the Boers, of course, had horses, firearms and, for live captures, a form of lariat. They found the great herds of Quaggas and antelope easy pickings indeed and, both in the Cape and north by the Orange River, were reported to be ‘as much interested in the hide business as in their general occupation of farming’. For their own use, sacks for storage and transportation were normally made from the sturdy, lightweight Quagga skins and were still to be seen in everyday use long after the herds themselves had disappeared and the shrill warning cries ‘kwa-ha-ha, kwa-ha-ha, quickly repeated’ were only a memory preserved in the animals’ name.
The destruction of the great herds which abounded in the 1840s seems to have taken about 30 years. The last wild Quagga was killed in 1878, and in 1883 the last captive Quagga (a female) in the Amsterdam Zoo died, rendering the species extinct."
