Resurrecting the Quagga

Hello everyone!

With the recent findings and discoveries on quagga ancestry, I'm wondering whether it would be possible to bring the (sub)species back?
From what I've read, it would appear to be more straightforward than resurrecting other extinct fauna.

Any thoughts?

 

The 'Quagga Project' in South Africa has been working along these lines for a couple of decades now. They have used Zebras from existing South African populations of Plains Zebras for this selective breeding project. They are now into about the fourth generation of breeding. Look on the 'Quagga Project' website for details.

While they claim to have already produced animals resembling Quaggas, I would dispute this. What they are producing is increasingly stripeless 'white' zebras. They admit themselves they have got nowhere so far with recreation of the dark brown body colour, which was the other hallmark, to varying degrees, of 'true' Quaggas. Also if you compare the two, the striping patterns are completely different. I maintain they aren't achieving their aim of producing animals that resemble Quaggas, though they persist in saying they are.

 

If the quaggas were genetically distinct from all other species or subspecies of zebra, then the selective breeding is not going to recreate the quagga, simply an animal that resembles the quagga.

Unless, of course, they are manipulating the offspring at the genetic level.



Hix

 

Without cloning or some other crazy science, the best we can do is create an animal that physically resembles the quagga.

 

Same with aurochs & tarpans that are mimicked by Heck cattle & horses...

 

Pretty much. There's also a project to breed domestic dogs that physically resemble dire wolves. The people behind said project want dogs that not only look like them, but have the same lifespan as well. (they're going off of the lifespan for gray wolves to use as an estimate)

 

I believe the thinking behind this project is that if quagga were a subspecies of plains zebra, they represent the southern most of a continuum. Thus it is possible that some of these traits could be found and expressed from the more southerly of the extant plains zebra subspecies.

 

That is exactly it. Stripe reduction has been fairly simple to achieve, more so than the brown base colour. Some extant Southern Zebras do have a brownish colouration but it seems they haven't so far been able to fix or extend it in the project animals.

 

Of course they aren't really trying to breed back the animal. That's impossible for pretty much any species.

 

It's madness, it's like trying to breed back the smilodon by attempting to make a very big house cat with longer teeth!

 

And clouded leopard, since it has the right fangs
There are actually attempts to create a housecat with tiger phenotype (toyger breed).

 

Would be nice if scientists would try to obtain useble DNA from the Quagga and use this to bring the ( sub )species alive again.

 

If possible, which I don't think it is at present, that would at least produce animals with all the correct characteristics of the genuine animal.

I would use the term'pseudo-Quagga' for all the animals in this current project, even if they do eventually achieve animals with a close resemblance to the original.

 

Cloning would be difficult, all we have is dried skins and bones. It's something that might be possible in the future, but I don't think it's going to be happening in the next few decades.

 

Assuming they succeed, what is the point? Are they then going to breed up a herd of look-alikes and release them into the wild?



Hix