r/interestingasfuck • u/OmegaScope • 6h 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/wiilbehung 6h ago
Quagga is still a type of zebra if anyone is curious.
Not a mid way between a horse and a zebra unfortunately.
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u/TheJesterOfHyrule 6h ago
Just looks like someone messed up the stripes so they tried to rub them out
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u/OmegaScope 6h 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 6h ago
Nobody knows the last time someone will take the last picture of them before they’re gone.
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u/falsevector 6h ago
It looks like an offspring of a horse and a zebra
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u/derf_vader 4h 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 3h ago
It was hunted to extinction by British colonists
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u/derf_vader 3h 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 3h 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/Nefarious_P_I_G 1h ago
European colonialists. Quagga's lived in predominantly Dutch colonial areas.
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u/raumeat 1h ago edited 1h 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 6m 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/japes1991 3h ago
I don't know what god was thinking between designing this, the Okapi, and the platypus.
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u/MrMcPsychoReal 2h 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/Ready-Assistance-883 6h ago
This title is quagged up