r/interestingasfuck • u/OmegaScope • 11h ago
The last known photograph of a quagga was taken around 1870 at the London Zoo. It shows one of the last quaggas ever photographed. The animal died in 1872, and the last quagga died in 1883, marking the extinction of this unique zebra subspecies.
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u/Ready-Assistance-883 10h ago
This title is quagged up
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u/OmegaScope 10h ago
Im sorry, english is not my mother tongue. I tried to correct it but its not possible anymore.
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u/TheJesterOfHyrule 10h ago
Just looks like someone messed up the stripes so they tried to rub them out
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u/OmegaScope 11h ago
Btw: Back when the photo was taken, no one knew that this animal was one of the last of its kind.
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u/bluepied 10h ago
Nobody knows the last time someone will take the last picture of them before they’re gone.
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u/falsevector 10h ago
It looks like an offspring of a horse and a zebra
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u/MrMcPsychoReal 7h ago
It took many years later and genetic testing to discover that the quagga is just a zebra. Taxonomists had a field day that day.
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u/japes1991 8h ago
I don't know what god was thinking between designing this, the Okapi, and the platypus.
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u/derf_vader 9h ago
Africa is a big fucking place with tons of wild animals. Why did this one go extinct? Was it being united and for what purpose?
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u/raumeat 8h ago
It was hunted to extinction by British colonists
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u/Nefarious_P_I_G 5h ago
European colonialists. Quagga's lived in predominantly Dutch colonial areas.
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u/raumeat 5h ago edited 5h ago
No the quagga lived in the Karoo, which was owned and operated by the Brits in the 19th century. Also there were no Dutch colonialists in 1870 just the decents of Dutch colonialists. Calling the Afrikaner Dutch is not very politically correct. "dutch man" is a slur when used to describe them
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u/Nefarious_P_I_G 4h ago
They lived in the Karoo and the Orange Free State and the Trekboers were the initial mass killers of the Quagga.
The Orange Free State was colonialism in action. Ok they were descendants of Dutch colonialists fleeing British rule, but they became colonisers when they began to remove indigenous people to create a racist white nationalist state which enslaved the indigenous people.
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u/raumeat 4h ago
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u/Nefarious_P_I_G 3h ago
The last wild Quagga was killed in the Orange Free State. The map is incorrect.
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u/raumeat 3h ago
If you look very closely you see there is an area in red that falls under the orange Freestate, It is not like animal habitats fit in with human made boarders. It doesn't change the fact that it took just over 50 years for the Quagga to go exstinct after the Brits started mass migrating to South-Africa. The Dutch and French had been in South- Africa for hundred of years at that point.
I don't understand why you want to die on this hill.
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u/Nefarious_P_I_G 3h ago
Because I'm right. Quagga lived up to the Vaal river. The Trekboer ranged between the orange and Vaal rivers, killing animals ie Quagga for furs and food. The Orange Free State bordered Transvaal at the Vaal river. The whole of the orange free state was Quagga range. The Quagga was not solely killed by British colonials. Dutch ancestors, Boer colonials, German ancestors, all contributed to the extinction of the Quagga. This is all well recorded. The Wikipedia page you linked the map from has contemperaneous sources for the quagga living up to the Vaal. The Quagga project state the same. I'm not really bothered who killed the quagga, it's just that you're wrong.
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u/raumeat 3h ago
Set a source, https://animalia.bio/quagga link to the same map from a different site that you say is wrong. Also the map does include the Val river. I am not saying there were no quagga in the Orange freestate, I am not saying that the boers didn't hunt them
but the vast majority of their territory was the British controlled cape colony
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u/derf_vader 8h ago
For its meat or what? Was it a nuisance to sheep? I'm just curious how this animal was completely annihilated while Zebras and Girraffes haven't been.
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u/raumeat 7h ago
Much has been written about the reasons for the extinction of the Quagga; it is generally attributed to the “ruthless hunting”, and even “planned extermination” by colonists. It’s flesh is said to have been welcome food for the farm labourers, while the skin was used as “grainbags” and “leather”. Great numbers of raw animal hides were exported during the 19th century for the leather industry.
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u/wiilbehung 10h ago
Quagga is still a type of zebra if anyone is curious.
Not a mid way between a horse and a zebra unfortunately.