Rewild Genomics / De-extinction Programs / Quagga
Extinct · 1883

Quagga

Equus quagga quagga

Half-zebra, half-horse in appearance, striped only on the front of its body, brown and plain toward the rear. The last quagga died in an Amsterdam zoo in 1883, just years after the species had been driven to extinction in the wild. It also launched the entire field of ancient DNA research.

1883
Year of extinction
~1.3m
Shoulder height
~300 kg
Body mass
Perissodactyla
Order
Natural history

The zebra that
forgot its stripes

The quagga was a subspecies of the plains zebra, but its appearance was so distinctive that for much of its history, naturalists classified it as a separate species. Its striking coloration, bold stripes on the head and neck fading to a plain brown body with white legs, made it one of the most visually distinctive large mammals in southern Africa.

Quaggas inhabited the Karoo and southern Free State regions of what is now South Africa, living in herds on open grassland and scrubland. They were apparently highly social and reportedly bold enough to serve as alarm animals for domestic livestock, making a distinctive "kwa-ha" call (from which their name derives) when predators approached.

The quagga's partial stripes have fascinated geneticists: the pattern suggests that the genetic mechanisms controlling stripe expression were still present in the genome but partially suppressed. This makes it a uniquely tractable target for selective breeding-based revival. The Quagga Project in South Africa has been selectively breeding plains zebras for reduced striping since 1987, with remarkable results.

A Rouwkuil quagga-phenotype individual grazing in dry grassland, showing the distinctive striped foreparts fading to plain brown on the hindquarters

A Rouwkuil individual from the Quagga Project, showing the partial-stripe phenotype characteristic of Equus quagga quagga — bold markings on the head and neck fading to plain brown on the hindquarters.

Photograph of a living quagga at Artis Zoo, Amsterdam, circa 1870s — one of only a handful of photographs ever taken of the species

One of only five photographs ever taken of a living quagga. This individual was photographed at Artis Zoo, Amsterdam, in the early 1870s — likely the same mare who would become the last of her kind, dying there on August 12, 1883.

"In 1984, two short DNA sequences from a quagga museum skin became the first DNA ever recovered from an extinct species, launching an entire scientific field."

Photographs of living quaggas exist: a small, haunting collection of images taken in London Zoo in the 1870s, showing a stocky, alert animal that looks unmistakably like a zebra from the front and a horse from the rear. These images, combined with taxidermy specimens in museums around the world, give us an unusually complete picture of the animal in life.

The last known quagga in the wild was shot in 1878. The last individual in captivity, a mare at Artis Zoo in Amsterdam, died on August 12, 1883. The species had been exterminated so thoroughly, and so recently, that it was not recognized as extinct until years after the Amsterdam mare died.

Extinction

Shot out of
existence

The quagga's extinction is among the most straightforward in history: it was hunted to death. European colonists in southern Africa killed quaggas in enormous numbers for meat and hides, which were exported to Europe and used to make leather goods and grain sacks.

The species was also seen as direct competition for livestock grazing, and farmers killed them in organized hunts to protect pasture. There was no conservation framework, no recognition of the species' vulnerability, and no meaningful legal protection. By the time anyone thought to establish quaggas in captive breeding programs, it was too late.

What makes the quagga's extinction particularly painful is its proximity. The last wild animals were killed just 145 years ago, within living memory of people alive in the early 20th century. This is not a Pleistocene casualty but a Victorian-era crime: a species eliminated through deliberate, industrial-scale slaughter within the span of a few decades.

The quagga also stands as a warning about the reliability of institutional knowledge. The Amsterdam zoo did not realize their female was the last of her kind. No urgent attempt at preservation was made because no one recognized the emergency until it had already passed.

Depiction of colonial-era quagga hunting on the South African Karoo — hunters on horseback and on foot pursuing a running herd across open veld

Colonial hunting parties drove quaggas to extinction within roughly two centuries of European settlement. Organized hunts targeting entire herds for hides and meat left no viable wild populations by the late 1870s.

Pre-1600s
Vast herds on the Karoo
Quaggas roam the grasslands of southern Africa in large herds, coexisting with springbok, wildebeest, and white rhinoceros across millions of hectares of open veld.
1652
Dutch settlers arrive at the Cape
European colonization begins. Within decades, systematic hunting of quaggas for hides and meat begins. The animals' trusting, gregarious nature makes them easy targets.
1850s–1870s
Industrial-scale slaughter
Commercial hunting operations eliminate quaggas from large portions of their range. The last wild populations are confined to remote areas of the Karoo. A few animals reach European zoos, the only living specimens outside Africa.
1878
Last wild quagga killed
The final documented wild quagga is shot in South Africa. The extinction is not recognized. The Amsterdam zoo still had a living female.
August 12, 1883
The last quagga dies
The Amsterdam mare dies. The species is extinct. The zoo, unaware of the animal's significance, records the death without alarm. Recognition of extinction comes years later.
1984
Ancient DNA field is born
Higuchi et al. extract and sequence two short mtDNA fragments from a quagga museum skin, the first DNA ever recovered from an extinct species. The field of ancient genomics begins.
Factor 01
Commercial Hunting
Systematic killing for meat and hides drove the quagga to extinction within roughly two centuries of European arrival in southern Africa. No single event, just relentless, economically motivated slaughter with no regulatory framework to limit it.
Factor 02
Agricultural Competition
Farmers viewed quaggas as competitors for grazing land and killed them to protect livestock pasture. This had nothing to do with hunting for resources. It was pure habitat conversion at the expense of a native species.
Factor 03
Institutional Failure
No zoo or institution recognized the impending extinction in time to establish a viable captive population. The Amsterdam specimen died unremarked. A species that had been photographed, painted, and studied was allowed to vanish without a single rescue attempt.
Genomics research

Where ancient DNA
began

The quagga has a unique position in genomic science: in 1984, it became the first extinct species to have DNA successfully extracted and sequenced: two short mitochondrial fragments recovered from a museum skin in Mainz. This experiment, by Russ Higuchi and colleagues at Berkeley, founded the entire field of ancient DNA research.

Today, the quagga genome has been fully sequenced to modern standards from multiple museum specimens. The genomic data has answered the long-standing taxonomic question definitively: the quagga was a subspecies of the plains zebra (Equus quagga), not a separate species, meaning its genes still exist in living zebra populations, distributed and diluted across the living subspecies.

This makes the quagga genomics unusually tractable: the Quagga Project's selective breeding program has already produced animals phenotypically resembling quaggas within just a few generations, but genomic tools now make it possible to identify exactly which genetic variants controlled stripe reduction, and to target those variants directly rather than selecting blind.

Research program: Quagga

Rewild Genomics is building comparative genomic analysis pipelines for quagga vs. plains zebra, focused specifically on identifying the genetic architecture of stripe pattern reduction: the set of regulatory and coding variants that controlled the quagga's distinctive partial-stripe phenotype.

This research has direct implications for the Quagga Project's selective breeding program, potentially providing genomic markers that would allow breeders to select with far greater precision. It also serves as a model system for understanding pigmentation genetics in equids more broadly.

Full genome sequenced Museum specimens available Plains zebra proxy Stripe-pattern loci NCBI / GenBank

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