Some of South Africa’s endangered Some of South Africa’s endangered and extinct speciesand extinct species

By: VG grade 10 History classBy: VG grade 10 History class

The Endangered and ExtinctThe Endangered and ExtinctCape Mountain Zebra

Mountain Lion

Knysna Sea Horse

The Cape Warthog

The Ceolasanth

Quagga

Cape Mountain Lion

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HISTORY..John Spence searched for origins of the cape lions about thirty years ago.The Cape lion were thought to be extint during the regions of the 1850s. His search ended a year ago when he received pictures of a magnificent black-maned lion at the Novosibrisk Zoo in Central Siberia.

As a young man, Spence had read about such lions roaming the slopes of Table Mountain and Signal Hill in what is now the modern city of Cape Town. His imagination was fired by stories of massive lions attempting to scale the walls of the 17th-century Dutch castle that was built by Commander Jan van Riebeeck, the chis powerful predator roams the Americas, where it is also known as a puma, cougar, and catamount.They prey on dears and hunt at night. WHERE?They were found in the cape province also in the sub sahara of Africa. Most of them were found in cape town onj table mountain this tells us that they lived through cold and rough climate conditions. WHY?Trophy hunters and farmers hunted the lions to extinctionhttp://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/07/0726_capelion.htmlhttp://bigcats2.tripod.com/Extinct_Cats.html

Knysna Sea Horse

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What is the knysna sea horse?

The knysna sea horse is an unusual sea horse that is only found in South Africa and occurs in estuaries. It has the most limited distribution and is put down as the most

threatened sea horse.

How does it look like?

Its tail is strong and is adapted to seize and grasp, it also has a wound in its tail around the hold last of plant material. It has the ability to change color

and blend with its surroundings because of this they are known as the chameleons of the sea, like chameleons their eyes can also move

independently.

Extinction of the sea horse

In this present century, the things that sea horses were able to do led to the threats of its extinction because humans have found it necessary to collect and keep them in

captivity. Sea horses are in demand as aphrodisiacs cast & they have been collected for the curio industry.

Why the sea horses were extinct

The reason behind the extinction was because of their small brood size because of the males which meant the young would depend on them for survival . Others can`t reproduce until they find a new partner , low population density and nature rates of adult mortality low and making fishing a new pressure. How the sea horses were extinct Two years ago the a research was done on Knysna sea horses by the Sea Horse Research Group from Rhodes University to find the population of sea horses as a warning system for problems in the lagoon which is important for the Oyster Industry , and financial benefits which led to their extinction. REFERENCES: = www.springerlink.com/index/G95301JH553N5R57.pdf = www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2002/september/seahorse.htm = www.arkive.org/knysna-seahorse/hippocampus.../info.html

The Ceolacanth

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Description The coelacanth is an endangered species. It has large blue eyes, silver blue scales with white markings. It’s up to 1, 8 meters long in length and 95 kg in weight. It has bony, meaty, jointed fins, because of this that is why it was thought that it could’ve have walked. It normally has up to 5 baby fish, so they give too little birth; the coelacanth itself is very rare. They have paired fins and have a greater life span. Since they can’t absorb oxygen quickly they swim very slowly and they can die quickly when they are brought up to the surface.

The Cape Warthog

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(Phacochoerus aethiopicus)

WHAT IS IT? It is an extinct animal (mammal) that originally came from South Africa (Cape Province). It is quite different from other hogs but it has similar properties to a Somali Warthog. WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?

Its skull is smaller but broader than a regular or normal warthog. There aren’t any incisors in a Cape warthog but then in a normal warthog you

would find 2 in the upper jaw and 6 in the lower. HOW AND WHY IS IT EXTINCT? THE Cape warthog became extinct due to 2 factors that had a huge influence on it. The expansion of the Cape colony increased the demand of pig meat (pork) and they were exterminated in the Cape region soon after the arrival of the Dutch colonists. They were mainly extinct in Namaqualand which was before the settlement of the Dutch in the Cape. Many would say the large population of the Cape warthog was exterminated by the Khoi and San by this in a manner is contradictory because it is believed that the San and Khoi would have rejected pig meat. However in 1896 the Cape warthog suffered a lot from the rinderpest epidemic WHEN DID IT BECOME EXTINCT? The Cape warthog approached its extinction in the end of the 19th century.

REFERENCEShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

cape warthogwww.wikiansnswers.com

pictures from Google pictures.

The QUAGGA

• Origin:• The name quagga comes from the khoikhoi the first inhabitants of

southern Africa. In khoi language quagga means zebra in English it also makes the same sound as a zebra. The quagga originated from a population of plain zebra. Its closest taxonomy (classification) is the giraffe.

• What is the qagga?• Extinct type of zebra. It formerly inhabited open plains is South

Africa, where its range overlapped that of the common zebra.

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The QUAGGA

• Origin:• The name quagga comes from the khoikhoi the first inhabitants of

southern Africa. In khoi language quagga means zebra in English it also makes the same sound as a zebra. The quagga originated from a population of plain zebra. Its closest taxonomy (classification) is the giraffe.

• What is the qagga?• Extinct type of zebra. It formerly inhabited open plains is South

Africa, where its range overlapped that of the common zebra.

Quagga

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The QUAGGA

• Origin:• The name quagga comes from the khoikhoi the first inhabitants of

southern Africa. In khoi language quagga means zebra in English it also makes the same sound as a zebra. The quagga originated from a population of plain zebra. Its closest taxonomy (classification) is the giraffe.

• What is the qagga?• Extinct type of zebra. It formerly inhabited open plains is South

Africa, where its range overlapped that of the common zebra.

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• What did it look like?..• Its coat was sandy brown.• Its legs and tail whitish: only its head, neck and

shoulders were dark-striped.• Living in herds and competing with domestic sheep for

grass, Quaggas were exterminated in the 19th century; the last died in1883 in Amsterdam Zoo. Recent analyses of DNA from a Museum specimen indicated that the Quagga is almost certainly a variant of the common zebra rather than a separate species as was once believed. Quaggas are classified in the phylum Chordata, Subphylum Vertebrate, class Mammalia, order Perissodactyla, family Equidae.

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Where? HabitatThe quagga lived on the drier parts of South Africa on grassland. They lived between the Orange River boarder and the great kei river boarder. Basically in South Africa’s Cape Province and southern part of the Orange Free State

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Extinction:• There are two known theories to the extinction of the Quagga. They

were hunted for their skin and meat until their kind was extinct that’s the first theory. The second one is that over time the Quagga encounted evolution and changed and is no longer recognizable.

• Conservation:• No attempts were made to save the quagga, no one knew it was

endangered until they saw the mare at the zoological society of London’s in regents park in 1870 that was when the photographed the only quagga alive.

• Today there is a quagga project going on in south Africa were people are putting all their knowledge in bringing back the quagga. So far they are breeding with selected plains zebras, they doing this because the quagga was known to have a very similar DNA to the zebra and if they breaded selected zebras maybe they would reproduce zebras with the colours of the quagga.

• References:• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quagga.• www.petermaas.nl/extinct/speciesinfo/quagga.htm Back