The quagga, whose name is  onomatopoeia for the sound it made, is an extinct subspecies of zebra.  They diverged from zebra during the  Pleistocene Epoch, with quaggas  developing a different coat pattern than zebras. They were partially  covered by brown and white stripes,  with a brown body and white legs.  They were two and a half meters long and almost a meter and a half tall  at the shoulder. Quaggas were lively  equids, but unfortunately they were  easy to kill, which lead to their  untimely extinction at the hands of  humans in 1878. They were prized for their meat and their skins, which  were used for trading.  Found in South Africa until their unfortunate extinction, quaggas  lived in grasslands in mutually  beneficial relationships with  wildebeast and ostriches. They  roamed in herds that could contain  between 30 to 50 animals, grazing  on the abundant grass. In 1987, a  breeding project was started in  South Africa with the intent to  selectively breed zebras until they develop a quagga-like pattern. Once a population has been created, these  pseudo-quaggas will be reintroduced  into the wild even though their  genetic code will be different.  Foals in the current generation of the project are quickly losing their  stripes and starting to resemble  the extinct quagga more and more.