Scientists divided over resurrection of extinct quagga species

This quagga is revealing its true stripes.

Scientists who claimed to have resurrected an extinct zebra relative are diving experts, with some deeming it the equine equivalent of “Jurassic Park” while neigh-sayers call it a superficial knockoff.

“They’re effectively just making a zebra less stripey,” said Douglas McCauley, an evolution expert at the University of California, Santa Barbara told the the Wall Street Journal while deriding the creation.

“They’re just so good,” exclaimed March Turnbull, the project coordinator for the Quagga Project, while watching the Rau quaggas at Vergelegen, a wine farm near Cape Town that houses 10 of the animals. AFP via Getty Images

The animal in question is the quagga, a member of the horse family that once roamed Africa’s Great Plains before getting hunted to extinction — the last one, a mare, died in an Amsterdam zoo in 1883.

This galloping grazer was similar to its barred counterpart but was browner and only had stripes on the front half of its body and head, evoking a zebra rough draft of sorts.

In 1987, dedicated quagga fans started the Quagga Project, a campaign to bring this more sepia-toned zebra back from the dead thanks to developments in genetic sequencing, marking the first time this technique had been tried on an extirpated creature, the WSJ reported.

Instead of cloning the creature, however, scientists attempted to resurrect the quagga via “selective rebreeding” aka breeding subspecies to match, per the site. One can think of it as the genetic equivalent of a painter mixing various colors in a palette to get the desired pigment.

Some scientists derided the creation as a less stripey zebra. AFP via Getty Images

After analyzing the DNA of a deceased quagga foal, they found it was genetically similar to Southern Plains Zebras, a browner, sparsely-striped zebra relative that they deemed a good basis for the Quagga’s second coming.

The campaign was rife with obstacles. Reinhold Rau, a German taxidermist who was integral to the Quagga Project, died in 2006, taking some steam out of their efforts, while it took some time to see if the experiments bore fruit.

For instance, it takes two years to determine whether the foal has the requisite number of stripes and stallions need to be moved every five years or so to curb inbreeding.

Despite the hurdles, researchers finally created an anima — named Rau quaggas after the project’s late godfather — that was a dead ringer for its extinct counterpart,

“They’re just so good,” exclaimed March Turnbull, the project coordinator for the Quagga Project, while watching the doppelgangers at Vergelegen, a wine farm near Cape Town that houses 10 of the animals.

Fortunately, aside from the aforementioned cosmetic criticisms of it simply being a less stripey zebra, many found the reimagined quaggas more valid than the ongoing woolly mammoth resurrection efforts, which involve breeding an elephant to be more cold-tolerant.

South African conservation Stuart Pimm, for instance, deemed this a pure exercise in ego.

Annelin Molotsi, a molecular biologist working on the project, plans to sequence the genome of the re-bred quaggas, which the scientist believes will “answer a lot of questions” beyond satisfying a scientific curiosity.

For instance, even if Rau quaggas aren’t identical to the real deal, the project potentially holds the blueprint to rebuilding populations of endangered animals, according to Peter Heywood, professor emeritus of biology at Brown University who’s written a book about the quagga.

“They are a symbol of hope,” he said.