Pooties and woozles are quite popular critters here on the Daily Kos, a favored subject of many a diary. Little attention, however, is given to another of popular companion animal. I ran across an article describing the plight of a species in the exclusionary zone of Chernobyl that interested me...
A herd of Critically Endangered wild Przewalski's horses in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is under threat from poachers, say scientists.
Researchers in Ukraine say that the population may be in decline because poachers have been removing the animals faster than they are breeding.BBC
This made me think that dKos would be interested in a diary about an animal that as late as the First World War was quite possibly humanity's most useful animal partner.
Unlike cats and dogs who's wild genetic pre-cursor species (Felis silvestris lybica and Canis lupus, respectively) still exist, the horse (Equus ferus caballus) has no living relative considered to be their direct ancestral species. As a matter of fact, there are only two sub-species of horse still living, Przewalski's [Sheh-VAL-ski] Horse (Equus ferus przewalskii of Mongolia...
and the domesticated 'wild' horse mentioned above. All the known breeds of horse including the North American Mustang and Australian Brumby all belong to the domesticated sub-species of horse Caballus. Wild members, the Mustang and Brumby, for example, are feral animals that escaped their cushy life as food and labor to nature :)
To humanity's shame a third species of horse, the Tarpan (Equus ferus ferus) went extinct in Russia in 1909. We've treated Przewalski's Horse only slightly better, however. The last wild population of Przewalski's Horse died off in Mongolia in the 1960's, but we are trying to make amends. Efforts to maintain the genetic diversity of the species began with reciprocal breeding programs in various zoos since 1977 and a program to return Przewalski's to their initial range has been in place since the 1990's. There are approximately 1,500 of these animals in the Ukrane, Mongolia, and China.
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Image: Engraving by an artist called Borisov in 1841 of a Tarpan, a five month old colt. It is the only drawing of this horse subspecies known to have been made from life. Since this individual is a juvenile it looks less proportionate and substantial than would an adult. Its immaturity certainly accounts for its small tail and may explain the "frizzy" or half erect mane. (Bennett 1998)
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Horses which live in an untamed state but have ancestors who have been domesticated are not true "wild" horses; they are feral horses. The best known examples of feral horses are the "wild" horses of the American west. When Europeans reintroduced the horse to the Americas, beginning with the arrival of the Conquistadors in the 15th century, some horses escaped and formed feral herds known today as Mustangs.
Australia has the largest population of feral horses, numbering around 400,000. Here's a link to the producers of the following video. A DVD is available from their site if you're interested.
Of course, here in the States we have our beloved Mustangs which we treat with a kind of benign neglect, but the wild Mustang isn't the only feral horses in the United States. The Chincoteague Pony of Assateague Island are quite well known.
There are, of course, many different feral horse breeds. Here's a list from the Wikipedia...
- Banker horse, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina
- Brumby, the feral horse of Australia
- Chincoteague Pony, on Assateague Island off the coasts of Virginia and Maryland
- Cumberland Island Horse, on Cumberland Island off the coast of southern Georgia
- Danube Delta horse, in and around Letea Forest, between the Sulina and Chilia branches of Danube
- ?Elegesi Qiyus Wild Horse (Cayuse), Canada; lives in the Nemaiah Valley, British Columbia
- Kaimanawa horse, New Zealand
- Kondudo horse, in the Kondudo region, Ethiopia; threatened with extinction
- Misaki Pony, Japan
- Mustang, legally protected by the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 in the western United States
- Namib desert horse, Namibia
- Nokota horse
- Sorraia, a feral horse native to Portugal and Spain
- Sable Island Pony found in Nova Scotia
- Welsh Pony, mostly domesticated, but a feral population of about 180 animals roams the Carneddau hills of North Wales. Other populations roam the eastern parts of the Brecon Beacons National Park.