"Quaggas" From Richard Flint)

ZI 1835 poster, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. The first known quagga arrived in the US in July 1833 as part of a large group of several dozen animals brought over from Africa on board the ship Triton by Zebedee Macomber, the first of three such expeditions he made. Macomber next returned in May 1834 with a shipment of 70 animals including four quaggas. When the famed Zoological Institute merged all of the menageries in America for the 1835 season, at least one surviving quagga appeared with their principal unit, one of 13 menageries they toured that year. Shown here is a huge poster (remarkably, one of four copies that survive) that is 9-foot high for that very unit of the 1835 Zoological Institute. Note the woodblock under the bold "Rhino" for it is their quagga. The last exhibited quagga I know of is one is advertised in 1840 on the Grand Menagerie owned by James Raymond (Joseph E.M. Hobby, manager). After the 1830s, of course, traveling menageries are no longer the great enterprises they once had been. The quagga, quite common into the mid-19th century, was quickly hunted to extinction because its hide was desirable and it competed with farmer's stock for grazing land. Nevertheless, some enterprising showman tried to keep the quagga in front of the American public even though the last quagga, who had outlived any of his brethren by several years, died in an Amsterdam zoo in 1883. However, it should be stated that the term quagga was indiscriminately applied to various zebras and, in a sense, the animal became extinct before it was generally realized, thus leading to some understandable confusion in later claims by showmen. Adam Forepaugh, Jr., accompanied a large importation of animals from Europe in late December 1882 (including five elephants) that supposedly included a quagga. This supposed quagga—trained to drive in double harness with a zebra—fell during a storm at sea, broke its back, had to be destroyed, and was thus thrown overboard according to a press account. Bostock's Zoo, which spent the winter of 1899-1900 exhibiting here in Baltimore, somehow offered quagga rides to local visitors. In addition, the Zoo had clown Bobby Mack with several trained animals including his unrideable mule Dynamite as well as a trained "quagga." Recent DNA analysis has revealed that the quagga is not a separate species but another variety of zebra. Consequently, there have been efforts to reintroduce a quagga by selective breeding. To learn more, blog readers can visit on the internet. Perhaps Ringling might add two quaggas to the attractive new mixed act of paired zebras and horses which Karen Houcke has been nicely rehearsing on the red show. Given the beautiful combination of animals she has been working that, hopefully, will be on the new show, the appearance and colors of a quagga would be a harmoniously stunning and unusual inclusion that might gain more appreciative press coverage than rambunctious runaway zebras sometimes generate. Dick Flint Baltimore