Jeffrey Revell, age 12, of Huntsville, Alabama for his question:
What sort of animal is a guagga?
In the year 1883, the Amsterdam Zoo mourned the death of one of its most cherished animals. She was an aged quagga and the last of her species. For untold ages, herds of these sturdy wild horses had roamed the prairie plains of South Africa and when the old mare departed, they became extinct. Only four photographs are known to exist, plus written observations that suggest an interesting relationship between the quagga and the charming zebra.
The head and shoulders of the last quagga were marked with zebra stripes. Her sandy colored back and body resembled a smallish horse with a blond flowing tail. She wore long white stockings and her hoofs were like small black boots. She stood 54 inches tall at shoulder level and the length of her body was nine feet. Her mother had lived and died in the London Zoo and the little filly was taken to spend her remaining years in the zoo at Amsterdam.
Perhaps a very few old timers can remember the dwindling herds of quagga that once roamed the sparse plains between the Vaal and Orange Rivers of South Africa. These wild horses were southern cousins of the various zebras. It is interesting to note that the surviving zebra strains are less vividly marked in the southern part of their range, where there are fewer trees on the grasslands. The most conspicuous stripes are worn by the herds that live farther north, where trees and tall grasses cast vivid stripes of bright sunshine and dark shade.
Scientists suspect that through many generations the various zebras adapted their color schemes to blend with their local scenery. Perhaps their ancient ancestors were sandy colored wild horses and those that developed protective coloration were more likely to survive in lion territory. If this is true, the quagga may have closely resembled the ancestral zebra.
The zebras have donkey type ears and tails and they converse with each other in neighs and other horsey terms. The smallest, most vividly striped mountain zebra has a very high pitched neigh, though he seldom uses it. The quagga ears were smallish and rounded and, though his mane was short and brushy, he had a long tail of flowing hair. He communicated with a barking noise that sounded like kaw gha which explains how he came to be named the quagga.
If indeed the ancestral zebra was a quagga type wild horse, it would settle an old puzzle. Is the zebra black with white stripes or white with black stripes? Apparently the species was originally light colored and the dark stripes came later. However, a close inspection reveals that the dark stripes are not quite jet black and the light stripes are merely almost white even on the most vividly marked modern zebra.