August 12 1883

The last quagga, a female that lived at Amsterdam’s Natura Artis Magistra zoo since May 9 1867, dies. The quagga (a name created by Hottentot speakers as an imitation of its call), a subspecies of the plains zebra, lived in great numbers in the Karoo and southern Orange Free State. Farmers saw them as competitors to their livestock for the sparse grazing grass and they were hunted to extinction. Reinhold Rau, a natural historian, starts the Quagga Project in 1987 to create a quagga-like zebra population by selective breeding. The QP, in collaboration with eight other breeders, now has about 130 animals on eight properties. Picture: A quagga mare at London Zoo, 1870, the only individual photographed at that time