No eating in the library.
Quagga Mare - The only photograph of her kind
This 1870 photograph is of the quagga mare who resided at the Regent’s Park Zoo in London. She died not long after being photographed, and a few years later, the last wild quagga was shot. In 1883 in Amsterdam, the last captive quagga died. Only 100 years after being recognized as a separate species from the other zebras of South Africa, the species was extinct.
Quagga Stallion
Water colour painting on vellum parchment, by Nicolas Marechal, painted in Paris in 1793. This stallion was a member of the menagerie “herd” at Versailles, during the reign of Louis XVI. Unfortunately, the only female quagga in the herd lived there years before the stallion, and he never produced foals.
Dodo - Raphus cucullatus
*scritchscritchscritchscratch*
Though the etymology of the name “dodo” is all but certain, none of the possibilities for the origin of the name are particularly flattering. Some of the most commonly cited origins are from the Dutch word dodoor, meaning sluggard, or dodaars/dodaerse, meaning, well, “knot arse”.
Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, vol. III. 1849.
Way more adorable possum relatives than the United States has.
These Cuscuses are from New Guinea (top) and the Indonesian islands (bottom). Neither of them are very well-studied, and neither is very accessible to study, either. They live in dense rainforests and are strictly nocturnal. What is known is that they’re typically found in pairs, but other than that are not group-oriented.
Proceedings of the Scientific Meetings of the Zoological Society of London for the Year 1858.
Octopi:
1. Octopus Levis
2. Octopus Bermudensis
The Voyage of the HMS Challenger: Report on Cephalopoda Specimens
