Earth and Space News: Extinct Quagga Plains Zebra on Elementary's The Female of the Species

Summary: Elementary series episode The Female of the Species Feb. 12, 2015, breeds the extinct quagga plains zebra more for money and science than for love.

pen and watercolor drawing of young quagga (Equus quagga quagga) by Dutch artist, explorer and naturalist Robert Jacob Gordon (Sep. 29, 1743-Oct. 25, 1795) during four South Africa naturalist expeditions (1777-1786); Gordon African Collection, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, North Holland, northwestern Netherlands: Public Domain, via Rijksmuseum

The extinct quagga plains zebra articulates human appreciation of beauty, money and science for the plot of the Columbia Broadcasting System Elementary series episode The Female of the Species Feb. 12, 2015.

Two burgled plains zebras from the zoo bring Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) to the birth of the quagga through deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and surrogate motherhood. One of the episode's criminal commissions concerns the conspiratorial commercialization of a species created by science for collectors of the excellent, the exceptional and the exquisite. It does not describe the determination of 21st-century scientists to draw the quagga back from species demise through the Quagga Project on coat trait-dominated selective back-breeding.

The extinct quagga plains zebra emerges as likeliest for ethical ends to extinction as the first of Earth's extinct animals, in 1984, with their DNA explicated.

Illustrations, photographs, reminiscences, seven skeletons, tissue and 23 specimens furnish extinct quagga plains zebra physical features for non-scientists such as Detective Marcus Bell (Jon Michael Hill).

The Saan people's cave art and Khoikhoi language in southwestern South Africa and Swaziland respectively give the quagga's oldest illustrations and name, from their kwa-ha-ha calls. Nicolas Maréchal (1753-1802) had as model for his painting in 1793 Louis XVI's (Aug. 23, 1754-Jan. 21, 1793) stallion in the Palace menagerie in Versailles, France. Robert Jacob Gordon (Sep. 29, 1743-Oct. 25, 1795) illustrated a live colt (Equus quagga quagga) with a bagged adult Burchell's zebra (Equus quagga burchelli) in 1777.

Nineteenth-century art juggled Jacques-Laurent Agasse's (April 24, 1767-Dec. 27, 1849) live stallion at London's Royal College of Surgeons and Samuel Daniell's (1775-Dec. 16, 1811) in Bechuanaland.

The Zoological Society of London's Zoo kept five photographs, 1863-1870, of a captive mare whose fellow quaggas England knew as carriage-harnessed curiosities and livestock guards, 1830s-1870s.

Mayor Sir William Cornwallis Harris (Baptized April 2, 1807-Oct. 9, 1848), military engineer from Kent, England, listed quaggas among wildlife between the Orange and Vaal Rivers. The not yet extinct quagga plains zebra managed a "shrill, barking neigh", migrated between semi-desert scrublands and summer grasslands and moved with ostriches and white-tailed gnus. Amsterdam, Bamberg, Basel, Berlin, Darmstadt, Frankfurt, London, Mainz, Munich, Vienna and Wiesbaden netted 13 specimens extinct in wildernesses and captivity by 1878 and Aug. 12, 1883.

Extinction occurred from quaggas not breeding outside southern Africa and not surviving eastern, northern and western Cape and Free State southern Africa's agro-industrialists and imported grazers.

Elementary presented the resurrected extinct quagga plains zebra, described in 1778/1785 by Pieter Boddaert (May 26, 1733?-May 6, 1795), as somewhat big-bodied, big-eared, big-headed and dark-colored.

Illustrations, photographs, reminiscences and specimens queue up broad-striped backs, brown upper-sides, brown-and-white-striped heads and necks, red-brown flanks, stand-up, striped manes and white bellies, legs and tails. They reveal broadly narrow occiputs (basal, lower skull), front-gapped teeth (diastema), necks without mountain zebra-like dewlaps (longitudinal flaps), straight-profiled heads and thick winter coats replaced yearly. They suggest 49.21- to 53.14-inch (125- to 135-centimeter) heights from hooves to shoulders, 101.18-inch (257-centimeter) total head-body lengths and 500.45- to 701.07-pound (227- to 318-kilogram) weights.

The Quagga Project turns the back-bred Burchell's zebra into an exteriorly similar, genetically dissimilar resurrected extinct quagga plains zebra, for love of southern Africa's semi-desert scrublands.

Detective Marcus Bell (Jon Michael Hall) and Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) discover that the theft of two pregnant zoo zebras was part of a scheme to birth extinct quaggas in The Female of the Species (Elementary tv series season 3 episode 14): Sharon Seymour @TheSpoilerGirl, via Twitter Feb. 11, 2015

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Boddaert, P. (Pieter). 1784. "Quagga." Elenchus Animalium. Volumen I: 160. Roterodami [Rotterdam, Netherlands]: C.R. Hake, MDCCLXXXIV.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/89677#page/206/mode/1up

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. London England: George Newsnes Ltd., 1892.
Available via Project Gutenberg @ http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1661?msg=welcome_stranger

Duncan, F. Martin. 1913. "Sir Cornwall Harris gives the following description of the Quagga." Cassell's Natural History: 350-351. London England; New York NY; Toronto Canada; Melbourne Australia: Cassell and Company, Limited.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/cassellsnaturalh00duncrich#page/350/mode/2up

"The Female of the Species." Elementary: The Third Season. Los Angeles CA: Paramount Pictures Corporation, Feb. 12, 2015.

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2015/01/elementarys-yellow-clivia-and-yellow.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2014/10/bearded-dragon-natural-history.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2014/05/ficus-benjamina-botanical-illustrations.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2013/12/fruit-in-osage-orange-botanical.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2013/11/george-stubbs-painting-godolphin.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2013/08/turner-fighting-temeraire-painting-in.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-bruegel-painted-parable-in.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2013/02/osmia-avosetta-natural-history.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 1 February 2013. “Russian Tortoise Natural History Illustrations and Elementary's Clyde Jan. 31, 2013.” Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2013/02/russian-tortoise-natural-history.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2013/01/chopard-watch-worth-25-million-on.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/paul-signac-painting-women-at-well-in.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-van-gogh-pieta-painting-in.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/edward-hopper-painting-western-motel-in.html

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Available @ https://twitter.com/TheSpoilerGirl/status/565614982831017984

Earth and Space News

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Extinct Quagga Plains Zebra on Elementary's The Female of the Species

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