Saturday 2 November 2013

Another Quagga reconstruction

As you might or might not know, virtually all preserved Quagga skins have patterns that differ from each other. So I decided not to reconstruct what I consider the average within the population but one single specific individual for my latest Quagga life restoration. I chose the Wiesbaden skin: 



Quaggas actually have, contrary to the current Rau zebras, usually quite broad stripes with less space between them as far as I can see. I assume that most skins, like that one, are bleached and do not represent the original colour of the fur. For that, I used contemporaneous paintings such as the one below as a model. 


Painting based on a living Quagga by Nicolas Marechal from 1793
This is what came out of it: 



For comparison, that's my prognosis of how the Rau zebra of 2025 might look like based on the trend I see in the current animals of the Quagga Project: 



One noticeable difference between Quaggas and Rau zebras might be that the latter have broad stripes that fuse with the brown background while the Rau zebras tend to have continuously finer stripes that disappear towards the end of the trunk. But this is just my personal impression and we don 't know what future Rau zebras will look like yet. 

2 comments:

  1. I think that a quagga is the most cutest animal ever because it is cross but a zebra and a horse that what make it cute also that it look it to and bid you now that a quagga is also vary smart as cute.

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  2. Again, I am late to this blog Daniel, and you probably already know this but the painting by Marechal seems to be the Paris specimen. I mention this because there are pictures, via google (that I have only recently found) that show this animal and what appears to be very well preserved color. The head and neck striping are very dark, consistent with the painting as well as the pattern matching very well.
    --JRM

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