The Plains Zebra (Equus quagga, formerly Equus burchelli), also known as the Common Zebra or the Burchell's Zebra, is the most common and geographically widespread form of zebra, once being found from the south of Ethiopia right through east Africa as far south as Angola and eastern South Africa. The Plains Zebra is much less numerous than it once was, because of human activities such as hunting it for its meat and hide, as well as encroachment on much of its former habitat, but it remains common in game reserves.--------------------The Plains Zebra is mid-sized and thick bodied with relatively short legs. Adults of both sexes stand about 1.4 metres (4.6 ft) high at the shoulder, are approximately 2.3 metres (8 ft) long, and weigh about 290 kg (638 lbs). Like all zebras, it is boldly striped in black and white and no two individuals look exactly alike. All have vertical stripes on the forepart of the body, which tend towards the horizontal on the hindquarters. The northern species have narrower and more defined striping; southern populations have varied but lesser amounts of striping on the underparts, the legs and the hindquarters. The first subspecies to be described, the Quagga which is now extinct, had plain brown hindquarters. (Technically, because the Quagga was described first as E. quagga, the proper zoological name for the most common form of the Plains Zebra is E. quagga burchelli.)