Editing Breeding back (section)

=== Quagga ===
The [[Quagga Project]] is an attempt, based in [[South Africa]], to breed animals which strongly resemble the now-extinct [[quagga]], a subspecies of the [[plains zebra]] which died out in 1883. Accordingly, the project is limited to selecting for the physical appearance of the original, as recorded by twenty-three mounted specimens, many contemporary illustrations, and a number of written accounts of the animals.<ref name="QPe">[https://quaggaproject.org/the-project/ The Quagga Project explained]</ref>

The two most noticeable characteristics of the quagga, fewer stripes and a darker [[pelage]], are frequently observed to varying degrees in wild plains zebra populations. Animals with these two traits have been sought out for the Quagga Project breeding programme.<ref name="QPe"/> In its fourth breeding [[wikt:iteration|iteration]], the Quagga Project has resulted in foals displaying faint to absent striping on the hind legs and body, although the brown background color of the extinct quagga has yet to emerge. The project refers to their animals as "Rau quaggas", after the project founder [[Reinhold Rau]].<ref>{{cite web|first = Peter |last=Heywood|title= The Quagga and Science|website = quaggaproject.org |url= http://www.quaggaproject.org/downloads/2013/The%20Quagga%20and%20Science%20-%20Prof%20Peter%20Heyward.pdf}}</ref>

The project has been criticized for its focus on the morphological characteristics of the quagga, as the extinct animal may have possessed unrecorded behavioral or non-visible traits that would be impossible to reliably breed back from plains zebras.<ref name="QPe"/>