Word To Use Today: quagga.

 The quagga is, sadly, no more.

It was very like a zebra (in fact, genetic studies have recently shown it to be a zebra sub-species) and it looked like this:

this (stuffed) one is at London's Natural History Museum. Photo by Sarah Hartwell (Messybeast).

This is the only photograph that exists of a live quagga, taken at London Zoo in 1870:

The quagga lived in South Africa until people killed them all. 

Still, the quagga project is an attempt to breed quaggas from their closest living relative, Burchell's zebra; so, you never know, we may live to see live quaggas again. Or, at least, beasts that look like them.

The big question is, why did the quagga lose (or never develop) a striped behind? Well, some say the stripes are to put off biting insects - and it's true that quaggas did live in less buggy places than most zebras. Some say that stripes help keep the animals neither too hot nor too cold, and the quagga did live in rather kinder climates than some other zebras.

But no one knows, for the quagga is a rather mysterious beast. Sir William Cornwallis Harris wrote about them in the mid 1800s. He tells us that the quagga:

is almost invariably to be found ranging with the white-tailed gnu and with the ostrich, for the society of which bird especially it evinces the most singular predilection. 

So, yes, a quagga's best friend was an ostrich. 

Sir William also tells us how the quagga got his name: which is really, quite honestly, the main reason for this post.

Word To Use Today: quagga. Sir William says the quagga utters 'a shrill, barking neigh, of which its name forms a correct imitation'. Others have described the quagga's call as kwa-ha-ha, kwahaah, or oug-ga. The word is said to come from the Khoikhoi language (Khoikhoi! How about that?). 

 The Xhosa word i-qwara means something striped.