Following on from my previous ShukerNature article concerning the beautiful but long-forgotten isabella quagga (click here to access it), here are another two eyecatching but exceedingly obscure striped curiosities of the equine kind, retrieved from the annals of zoological history.
DANIELL'S QUAGGA – THE MOST EXTREME QUAGGA OF ALL?
Yes indeed, this particular quagga specimen is so extreme that it makes even the isabella quagga seem positively commonplace by comparison!
The specimen in question is a truly remarkable beast known as Daniell's quagga, after the artist Samuel Daniell (1775-1811), who produced a very handsome aquatint of it in 1804 for his African Scenery and Animals at the Cape of Good Hope two-part series (1804-1805). He based it upon this quagga form's only known specimen, which had been shot in southern Africa's so-called Square Mountains (currently unidentified by me) during 1801, but whose skin was not retained.
What was so extraordinary about it, as readily seen in Daniell's painting, is that this quagga specimen had exceptionally reduced striping. Indeed, the latter markings were confined almost entirely to the sides of the animal's neck, with only a few very faint lines upon its throat and shoulders, and none at all upon its torso. (True, I have seen paintings of certain other quagga specimens with stripeless torsos, but their throat and shoulders in addition to their neck all bore distinct, conspicuous stripes.) It also had a noticeably large head.
As with the isabella quagga, this specimen was initially deemed to represent a new zebra species, dubbed Daniell's quagga, and was accordingly given the species name danielli. However, and once again like its isabelline relative, Daniell's quagga was later subsumed into the plains zebra species Equus quagga as merely a non-taxonomic freak individual.
WARD'S ZEBRA – A ZEBRA CROSSING IN EVERY SENSE!
Ward's zebra is a distinctively-striped, long-eared interspecific hybrid resulting from matings between plains zebras E. quagga and mountain zebras E. zebra that was first brought to scientific attention in 1904 via a Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London report by British zoologist Prof. J.C. Ewart. In his report, Ewart stated that some years previously he had been presented with a taxiderm zebra specimen, the subject of his report, by Rowland Ward, who was a very famous London-based taxidermist at that time. Ewart had subsequently donated it to Edinburgh's Royal Scottish Museum (now part of the National Museum of Scotland).
According to Ward, the specimen had originally been "traded out of Somaliland", Somaliland nowadays being recognized as a region within Somalia. However, Ewart speculated that its kind "probably inhabits part of the area between the upper reaches of the Tana River and Lake Rudolf [later renamed Lake Turkana]", in Kenya.
Ewart was struck by the specimen's overall similarities to South Africa's Cape mountain zebra (E. z. zebra; Hartmann's mountain zebra E. z. hartmannae occurs in Namibia and Angola), but also noting in detail various differences in its striping, as well as its very long ears. Clearly not suspecting its hybrid nature, Ewart concluded his report by suggesting that it may constitute a new form of Kenyan plains zebra, duly dubbing it Ward's zebra in honour of its procurer, which "is adapted to a habitat similar to that of the mountain zebra", i.e. an example of convergent evolution.
In 1910, moreover, Ward's zebra was formally named Equus wardi, but its hybrid status was revealed via the discovery that specimens of this zebra form had been obtained repeatedly in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, around 1900. And in 1915, a male specimen was obtained at London Zoo. Indeed, some authorities have opined that Ewart's specimen had itself probably been bred in a menagerie, rather than originating from either the wilds of Somaliland or of Kenya.
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