“The quagga, is actually a subspecies of the plains zebra. Therefore, the main gene pool still exists within the plains zebra.”

 

The selective breeding program uses plains zebras that have quagga-like traits, an approach that livestock and horse breeders have used for centuries.

 

“‘Cause (what) I understand is you cannot bring anything back from extinction, but you can revive its best subspecies.”

 

It's an opinion shared by zoologist Peter Lyord, who says that other genetically coded features such as habitat adaptations, unique to the quagga could not be recreated in the new quagga breed.

 

“So it would be very unfair to say you have recreated the quagga, and there is also a danger. Er, and the danger is that you could create the wrong impression to people and say once an animal is extinct. Don't worry, we can always recreate it. This is a special set of circumstances. There are several subspecies. What these people are doing is they’re using one of the subspecies, er, and, its lack of striping in certain individuals to try and produce an animal that looks similar in external appearance to the quagga.”

 

Critics say it is impossible to know whether animals produced are true quagga, since they were never studied by modern science.  Aside from color and stripes, no other defining quagga characteristics, such as behavioral patterns or diet were ever noted and may have been lost to history.