I don't think that these animals will ever be regarded as true Quaggas (except to generate clicks on lazy news sites). As long as these animals are not maintained on protected areas, and they are not allowed to cross with wild zebras, I don't see this project as particularly harmful (any more than breeding pedigreed dogs at least). However, this is certainly a (so-far) ineffective cosmetic de-extinction program that does not contribute in any meaningful way to conservation or evolutionary studies. The only thing I find incredibly intellectually lazy is the idea they present on their website that states that because the quagga is only described by its physical characteristics, a zebra with those characteristics would be a real quagga. Obviously this is not true!
The Quagga was a Plains Zebra, and the animals used in the project are Plains Zebras too, though a different race. The Quagga may have been slightly larger and heavier than its more northerly counterparts, and possibly other differences also, but if the true Quagga coat colour/pattern was produced again, I would accept them as 'nearly Quaggas' The problem being they aren't so far achieving that either, whatever they say.
Not really. Even their promoted "very quagga-like" animals don't look "very quagga-like" except in squint-your-eyes ways.
Right. And even if they did produce a similar coat pattern, 200+ millennia of poorly understood evolutionary history cannot be distilled into a few cosmetic traits. Why would these animals fill the quagga's niche any better than ordinary plains zebras? They would just be much more inbred.
No they don't...at all. Photos and skins of true Quaggas indicate an animal with a coat pattern/colour more resembling a wild ass, but with zebra-markings on the forequarters( and the saddle in some instances). These markings are also subtly different to those the current zebras in the project carry, while little progress has been made so far in gaining the background colour. It was an interesting concept initially but after several generations I now think this is just a waste of time and they are trying to achieve the impossible.
Not entirely true. We have been accustomed to believe that a quagga was as how you describe it (through the few London Zoo photos and drawings). However when Reinhold Rau (of Quagga Project fame and the National Museum in Pretoria) was doing his initial work he compiled a nice photo ID of all the known individuals in museums around the world. The variation is quite staggering from dark/minimal striping only on front, through to broken striping and slightly darker coats on the back and rump. I'm sure it was through this initial research that lead him to consider that quaggas and plains zebras were the same spp (backed up by later genetics), and that what we see from East to South Africa is a basic cline of less striping, darker bodies and bigger animals. Personally I met Rau back in '96 and you would struggle to find a nicer bloke. I saw many of the zebras in his project and later also saw individuals in the wild in Namibia which looked similar. My thoughts are that before human intervention the zebras of southern Africa would have been difficult to differentiate into 'subspecies'. As to whether the project is a good use of money... well I'm not so sure.
I have seen his museum photo ID many times... which is why I said some carry stripes 'on the saddle also'- the Tring quagga being the most extreme example perhaps. However the majority do have the stripes mainly on the forequarters, and with a dark ground colour overall. My issue isn't with the degree of striping however, but with other characteristics. The pattern of the forequarter striping of Quaggas appears subtly different from existing plains Zebras too- thinner bands of white in some ways resembling Grevy's(not suggesting any relationship, we know from DNA, -and the voice call- that Quaggas were clearly just a form of Plains Zebra). Rau's foal quagga shows this very clearly- e.g. the narrow white neck bands. Also, if you study the photos of the London Quagga, and the better preserved museum specimens, there were other potential differences too- they appeared somewhat larger bodied and shorter-maned than any of the existing Plains Zebras, though those features can't now be recreated using zebras from a different population obviously . What's not apparent is if the least marked Quaggas were a seperate race, perhaps forming the Southern most populations, or whether the stripe variation which is apparent in the 23(?) museum specimens could occur within a single herd. Either way, I still don't think the project is producing animals that really resemble the original animals very much..at least so far.
On the quagga project website, there are photos of all specimens of Quagga. Sometimes there are black stripes on a brown background. Sometimes, stripes are formed out of the brown background, and narrow whitish lines appear in between. I find breeding back of Quagga interesting for mammal taxonomy. A population so different that it might be classified as a good subspecies, or a new species by Groves et al. criteria, was created in just 20 years and five generations. It is regardless if it is identical to old Quaggas. Also, the historical data shows that artifact 'distinct' subspecies or species can be easily classified from one population. Suppose that only the least striped quagga specimens existed in museum. The opinion could be that quaggas are more different that they were. Possibly a single more striped quagga would be called a hybrid or an abnormality. Also, living zebras in Africa turned into isolated groups from one pan-African population 200 years ago. This created fake distinct populations out of a single one. Steps on a continous variation are isolated and appear different. Even local or individual variations can become fixated in small isolated reserves.
In the latest issue of Zoo Grapevine & International Zoo News there is a 7-page article that is a remarkable analysis of the Quagga in captivity. The attention to detail by author Erik Block is phenomenal, with startling details of Quaggas in zoos around the world. Who knew that "an exhibition by Purdy, Welch, Macomber and Co.'s New Menagerie of Rare Beasts and Birds" advertised a Quagga in Pennsylvania in 1833? It is these kinds of obscure facts that are peppered throughout a terrific article. A must-read!
There are photos on the Quagga project pages now of a mare in the project that does have a much more overall brown body colour than any of the other 'white stripeless' zebras they have been producing. I believe the dark brown body colour was as much, or more of, a distinctive characteristic of the Quagga than the amount of stripe reduction, but its the trait they have had the least success in replicating in the generations produced so far. I'm not sure why they haven't featured her before as she is a mature animal with a foal. Is she a 'sport' captured more recently from a wild herd perhaps? If they can 'fix' this body colour in more of the project animals, they would at least be approaching a semblance of the original Quagga, even if the exact markings were still significantly different.
Some new photos have been released of a small breeding herd of Rau Quagga, led by young stallion Neville. The Quagga Project
A pity these photos seem to be in b/w, or at least not full colour so you can't see what colour they actually are. But there is currently one mare in the project called Nina J which really has been an advance in producing the more authentic darker ground colouration, but apart from her, and maybe her foal also, they are still predominately producing pale zebras. But Nina J proves there is some hope.
The Quagga Project website has more photos, and there are other brown individuals. I wonder if this project, which aims to bring together quagga-like alleles, may benefit from bringing new animals from outside with new genetic variation.
The full size photos in the link appear to be in colour on my screen. The pictures are quite pale though, but that might be from the South African sun
The mare Nina J seems the only animal with that amount of brown colouration though. There is a fainter 'pinkish' wash on a few others and some foals show brownish when young but it fades. I think the only way they will be able to 'fix' the brown colour- which after all was one of the two most distinctive Quagga traits, is by continuing to focus on breeding from the brownest animals. Unless they can identify any other zebra that has a strong brown shade- they do occurr sometimes and add these to the programme.
Yes, I know the quagga is extinct but I have read about the Quagga Project. It looks like many of those animals bred have quite a strong resemblance to the original animal. Are there any specimens in zoos outside of South Africa?
I don't believe any so-called "quaggas" from Reinhold Rau's Quagga Project have been exported from South Africa
