There is a popular school of thought which suggests that nature and culture are not as easily disentangled as previous generations maintained. Nowhere is this view more clearly vindicated than in the art of taxidermy display, a shining example of which has just been reintroduced to Edinburgh with the much trumpeted re-opening of the Royal Museum, the old Victorian part of the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street.

Perhaps it’s a result of their obsolescence – after all, the art was at its highest during the Victorian period, and collections worldwide are still founded on specimens from Darwin’s era – but stuffed animal collections seem to me to be the most vivid battleground for science and poetry known to man. That is if one views science and poetry as locked in battle – "cwtch" might be more accurate.

The Royal Museum closed its doors for extensive refurbishment in April 2008, meaning that, for a class-of-2007 fresher like myself, there was just enough time to be intoxicated by their taxidermy collection before three years of anxious anticipation took over. Most of all, I was waiting to be re-united with an artefact that ranks among the Museum’s less flashy exhibits but which nonetheless trumps most of them for historical richness. A stuffed female Quagga – the only one of its species to be photographed before extinction in 1883 – speaks with a more powerful obsolescence than most of the objects surrounding it.

Before closure, the Quagga (like a Zebra, but less flamboyant) was housed in a dark room somewhere behind the main display, kept in its own vitrine as if to maintain through all eternity the profound and increasing solitude experienced by the beast during its lifetime. That’s poetry, not least for a homesick fresher.

On returning I felt a different sensation. The Quagga is still off the beaten track but the face it presents to the world is now a very different one. Ascend the stairs all the way to level five and you’ll see it, fraternising with a Lynx, a Beaver, a colourful Kakapo and assorted others, in the large vitrine dedicated to revivals and reintroductions. Unbeknownst to this Quagga enthusiast, a revival programme has been in process for around a quarter of a century, and a herd of specimens – "Quaggas 2.0" – was recently introduced to the Elandsberg Nature Reserve in southern South Africa.

Now far from that cosmic loneliness, nestling instead between the interactive play-area and Scottish success stories like the White-Tailed Sea-Eagle, the Quagga’s expression more bland, its eyes less watery and melancholic. Conjoined they may be, but sometimes what is very good for nature can be very bad for culture.