Many people have heard of the zebra, but never the quagga, even though they’re very similar. The reason is that zebras are still around, while quaggas went extinct 100 years ago. A group of scientists outside Cape Town is trying to bring them back.

Quaggas resemble zebras. They have stripes, but only on the front half of their body. The rear half of their body is brown. They were very common in Africa, appearing in large herds, but were killed at alarming rate by European settlers. This year, scientists with a group called the Quagga project used DNA and selective breeding to basically bring quaggas back from the dead.

They didn’t just resurrect an extinct animal in one shot. They began by breeding animals that were strikingly similar to the quagga and with each new birth, the similarities got more defined.

Of course, just like any scientific endeavor, there have been critics saying that the project is a stunt and is only creating different-looking zebras, not quaggas. Project leader, Mike Gregor, commented, saying, “There are a lot of detractors who are saying you can’t possibly put back the same as what was here.” Of course they haven’t yet fully recreated the quagga, but that could certainly be a possibility.

The new quagga family is named Rau quaggas, after one of the project’s originators. As of now, there are only 6 out of 100 animals on the reservation in Africa that have this name. The team’s next step is to raise this number to fifty in order to have them living in a herd, just like they used to before their initial extinction.

This new project will obviously be met with some supporters and some critics. After all, if we can figure out how to bring a zebra species back from extinction, what else will we learn to bring back? This could be a good thing. We could bring back animals like the dodo and the baiji white dolphin in order to expand our biodiversity. Reintroducing the right animals could be good for our planet.

Of course, there is always a downside. What if the knowledge needed to bring back these animals fell into the wrong hands and the wrong animals are reintroduced, threatening us? Jurassic Park shows us what could happen when we aren’t careful about our technology. While an extinct dolphin being reintroduced to it’s habitat may be a beautiful thing, dinosaurs freely roaming the earth could be a threat to humanity and other species.

The safety of this new technology is critical in order to keep ourselves, current species, and new species safe. While it may look fun and interesting to bring back new species, we also need to consider the consequences. Only time will tell what the future of this technology will bring.