the extinct quagga was morphologically divergent in coat colour from all extant equids (horses, zebras and asses). The front half of the animal had brown zebra-like stripes, whereas the rear looked more like a horse (figure 1). It was formerly abundant in South Africa, which was also home to the mountain zebra (Equus zebra zebra), an extinct population of the plains zebra (Equus burchelli burchelli) and a small portion of the range of an extant subspecies of plains zebra in the northeast (Equus burchelli antiquorum)and Hartmann’s mountain zebra (Equus zebra hartmannae) in neighbouring Namibia to the northwest. Of the extant zebra species, the plains zebra is by far the most widely distributed, and is sympatric with Grevy’s zebra (Equus grevyi) in the north.