Facts about Quagga Zebra

1. 06

   Its name likely derives from the Khoikhoi word kwa-ha-ha, an onomatopoeic rendering of the animal's distinctive barking call.

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2. 05

   Quagga populations once roamed the Karoo and southern parts of South Africa in large herds before colonial-era hunting drove them to extinction.

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3. 04

   Unlike full zebras, quaggas had stripes only on the front portion of their bodies, with the hindquarters being plain brown.

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4. 03

   Quagga specimens held in museums provided DNA that was first successfully extracted and analyzed in 1984, making it one of the earliest extinct animals studied through ancient DNA.

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5. 02

   A selective breeding program called the Quagga Project, launched in South Africa in 1987, aims to recreate the quagga's distinctive reduced striping through back-breeding plains zebras.

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6. 01

   The quagga was a subspecies of plains zebra that went extinct in the wild in the late 19th century, with the last known individual dying in captivity in 1883.

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