Crossword clues for quagga
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Quagga \Quag"ga\, n. [Hottentot.] (Zo["o]l.) A South African wild ass ( Equus quagga syn. Hippotigris quagga). The upper parts are reddish brown, becoming paler behind and behind and beneath, with dark stripes on the face, neck, and fore part of the body. The species became extinct in the late 1800's, largely due to excessive hunting.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
zebra-like South African animal, 1785, from Afrikaans (1710), from the name for the beast in a native language, perhaps Hottentot quacha, probably of imitative origin. In modern Xhosa, the form is iqwara, with a clicking -q-. What was likely the last one died in an Amsterdam zoo in 1883.
Wiktionary
n. A southern African subspecies of zebra, (taxlink Equus quagga quagga subspecies noshow=1), which went extinct in 1883, and the upper parts of which were reddish brown, becoming paler behind and beneath, while the face, neck, and fore part of the body were marked by dark stripes.
WordNet
n. mammal of South Africa that resembled a zebra; extinct since late 19th century [syn: Equus quagga]
Wikipedia
The quagga ( or ) (Equus quagga quagga) is an extinct subspecies of plains zebra that lived in South Africa until the 19th century. It was long thought to be a distinct species, but genetic studies have shown it to be the southernmost subspecies of plains zebra. It is considered particularly close to Burchell's zebra. Its name is derived from its call, which sounds like "kwa-ha-ha".
The quagga is believed to have been around long and tall at the shoulder. It was distinguished from other zebras by its limited pattern of primarily brown and white stripes, mainly on the front part of the body. The rear was brown and without stripes, and therefore more horse-like. The distribution of stripes varied considerably between individuals. Little is known about the quagga's behaviour, but it may have gathered into herds of 30–50 individuals. Quaggas were said to be wild and lively, yet were also considered more docile than Burchell's zebra. They were once found in great numbers in the Karoo of Cape Province and the southern part of the Orange Free State in South Africa.
After the Dutch settlement of South Africa began, the quagga was heavily hunted as it competed with domesticated animals for forage. While some individuals were taken to zoos in Europe, breeding programs were unsuccessful. The last wild population lived in the Orange Free State, and the quagga was extinct in the wild by 1878. The last captive specimen died in Amsterdam on 12 August 1883. Only one quagga was ever photographed alive and only 23 skins are preserved today. In 1984, the quagga was the first extinct animal to have its DNA analysed, and the Quagga Project is trying to recreate the phenotype of hair coat pattern and related characteristics by selectively breeding Burchell's zebras.
Quagga is an extinct subspecies of the plains zebra.
Quagga may also refer to:
- Quagga (software), the unofficial successor to GNU Zebra, a routing software suite
- Quagga catshark, a small shark type
- Quagga mussel, a bivalve species native to Ukraine
Quagga is a network routing software suite providing implementations of Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Routing Information Protocol (RIP), Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and IS-IS for Unix-like platforms, particularly Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD and NetBSD.
Quagga is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Usage examples of "quagga".
In connection with the horses it is worthy of notice that the quagga zebra, which never comes together with the dauw zebra, nevertheless lives on excellent terms, not only with ostriches, which are very good sentries, but also with gazelles, several species of antelopes, and gnus.
We thus have a case of mutual dislike between the quagga and the dauw which cannot be explained by competition for food.
Majuba was the rude hut, hidden in the foothills, that was used by the shepherds who took the Courtney flocks up to the high pastures in the summer, and by the men of the Courtney family when they went out to hunt the quagga, the eland and the blue buck It was deserted at this season of the year.
Within the borders of the colony at any time of day one could hear the boom of their long roers, and in the season of the great animal migrations across the plains they had organized themselves into large mounted parties to hunt the wild horses, the quagga, for their hides, the spring buck and eland for their meat.
But in the 1980s, somebody used the latest DNA-extraction techniques on a piece of quagga hide, and recovered a lot of DNA.
So much DNA that people began to talk about bringing the quagga back to life.
And if you could bring the quagga back to life, why not other extinct animals?
The fact that the quagga lives together with ruminants feeding on the same grass as itself excludes that hypothesis, and we must look for some incompatibility of character, as in the case of the hare and the rabbit.
Their close relatives, the quagga, short and sturdier, assembled in lesser herds, a darker bay colour than the grey zebra.
He tugged a quagga hide from a nearby brassbound chest and dug out a square glass bottle.
Sudden light flooded down from above them, bursting through the gratings, painting quagga stripes of illumination.
A herd of quagga are drinking there, and five fat eland are coming down the path to the water.
For myself, I venture confidently to look back thousands on thousands of generations, and I see an animal striped like a zebra, but perhaps otherwise very differently constructed, the common parent of our domestic horse, whether or not it be descended from one or more wild stocks, of the ass, the hemionus, quagga, and zebra.
The quagga wheeled and galloped, delight and sun flashing off his flanks.
Squadrons of quagga galloped away in ranks, barking like packs of hounds.