Check out these adorable notecards from Etsy seller EnfinLaVoila: “This is a Photoshop montage I made with antique baroque prints. Can you resist?” You know you can’t. Get ’em here.
(“But Defrost, what’s a quagga?”)
Related posts:
Gucci’s 85th anniversary horse
This gorgeous zorse lives at a safari park at Schloss Holte Stukenbrock, near the German border with Holland, where she has her own enclosure. How she came about
(Hat tip to raincoaster!)
From Spluch:
The owner of this “Zebra” claims that it’s from Africa and was charging 5 bucks per ride. Many parents claim that from one look they can tell that it’s a white horse with black stripes painted on it, but they don’t complain since their children are having a great time.
I suppose it’s harmless so long as everyone’s happy…
Related posts:
The quagga is a now-extinct subspecies of the plains (Burchell’s) zebra. According to Wiki, it “was once found in great numbers in South Africa‘s Cape Province and the southern part of the Orange Free State. It was distinguished from other zebras by having the usual vivid marks on the front part of the body only. In the mid-section, the stripes faded and the dark, inter-stripe spaces became wider, and the hindquarters were a plain brown. The name comes from a Khoikhoi word for zebra and is onomatopoeic, being said to resemble the quagga’s call.”
“The extermination of the Quagga” by Franz Roubal 1931. Oil on Canvas
How were they related to horses, and other zebras? This diagram shows how horses, asses (donkeys) and zebras split off in their evolution (click to enlarge):
Image source: Stephen Budiansky, The Nature of Horses: Exploring Equine Evolution, Intelligence, and Behavior (1997).
If you’d like a more technical answer, have at it: “A rapid loss of stripes: the evolutionary history of the extinct quagga“, Leonard et al., Biology Letters: Biol. Lett. (2005) 1, 291-295 DOI: 10/1098/rsbl.2005.0323.
Extinction may not be forever, though; the Quagga Project aims to recreate the quagga through selective breeding of Plains zebras, and over 120 foals have been bred towards this goal. A colt named Henry, foaled in 2005, is their most quagga-esque foal so far and is the product of three generations of careful breeding.
He’s not quite there yet; there is still some striping on his hocks, a feature not exhibited on skin specimens in museums, so the quest continues. Similar “breeding back” attempts have also been made with tarpans, which I’ll feature in a future post (along with onagers and kulans). Need a reason to keep you coming back, after all… 😉
Cryptomundo has a few entries on quaggas.
Yup, we got stamps.
This is why I follow soccer instead.
This photo of a man and zebra was taken in East Africa in 1890; doesn’t look like it was a pleasant experience for either of them! Link (via Neatorama)
Found at Bits & Pieces. I have no idea what the story is here. 🙂
Cryptomundo reports that Zebastian, a zebra/horse hybrid, went missing from an Alberta farm around the beginning of December and is believed to still be at large. Imagine finding this critter in your backyard one frosty morning! (but if you do, call the RCMP and don’t try to catch him; he’s said to be unpredictable)
IT’S ZEBRAPALOOZA!
Hrm, I always thought equids had foals, not calves…?
This is a very image-heavy post; click through to see the rest.
Wonderful photo of zebras at the Denver Zoo taken by Elaine at Five Acres With A View.
Bridlepath
Bridlepath 