The Quagga’s Extinction

The quagga was a subspecies of the Plains Zebra. Native to South Africa, the quagga had once roamed Cape Province and parts of South Africa in great numbers. The animal was hunted down for its meat, hides, and to preserve food for domesticated stock. New predators and competitors for food or land were all reasons the quagga went extinct. The quaggas main part of their diet was grass, but they also ate herbs, fruit, and leaves when available. Because they needed daily water, they never went too far from a water source. A threat that had caused the quaggas extinction was excessive hunting. The Dutch wanted to use the Grasslands the quagga lived on for their own cattle, so they had killed as many as possible. They were also chanced out of their home as new animals moved into the land. The last wild quaggas had participated in a fight show in Haray in South Africa, seven to ten quaggas were killed when fighting against the bulls and other wild animals. After the incident, scientist realized that the quaggas were not the same as the Plain South African zebras. The quagga had officially went extinct when the last quagga died in captivity in 1883.

Scientists believe that because of the 1980’s molecular studies that had compared sequences of genetic code of Mitochondrial DNA extracted from tissue samples from one of the quaggas skin that they can use selective breeding to bring back the quagga, this project is called The quagga Project. The quagga were known to be a social animal that were often surrounded by other species of animals like the ostrich and wildebeest. With the ostrich’s great eyesight, the wildebeest’s strong sense of smell and the quagga’s sharp hearing gave these animals the advantage of knowing when predators were near.

References

http://www.extinct-animals-facts.com/Recently-Extinct-Animal-Facts/Quagga-Facts.shtml

https://www.answers.com/Q/Why_did_the_Quagga_become_extinct

http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/10_00/Quagga_project.shtml

https://quaggaproject.org/