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Quagga, Equus quagga


quagga
                    
        The quagga, now extinct, was a species of zebra that was once found in abundance in southern Africa (Clabby 1976).  Standing 13-14hh, it had the conformation of a stocky horse, with brown and white stripes found mostly on its head and neck, and with the rest of the body a solid brown that lightened on the lower parts of the body (Clabby 1976).

        In temperament, the quagga was gentle and easy to domesticate, and relatively unafraid of man.  Because of this, some quaggas were trapped and domesticated, but they were more commonly seen as easy prey and were shot for their meat and for their hides (Clabby 1976).  By the mid-19th century, the quagga had been extirpated from South Africa (McFadden 1999), and it completely disappeared from the wild in 1860 (Clotton-Brock 1992). The last individual of the species died in an Amsterdam zoo in 1883 (Clutton-Brock 1992).

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