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horse
The species: Equus ferus przewalskii, Groves 1986
Przewalski’s horse (takh or takhi in Mongolian) is the last wild horse,
you may know it: this one or its close cousin is painted in Lascaut’s
cave (France). These paintings show us that the species was present in
Europe during the last glaciations, 20 000 years ago. Climatic changes,
and very likely human activities already, relegated it to the Asian
steppes.picture on the right: Lascaut's cave painting
© N. Aujoulat, CNP - Ministère de la Culture
Description
It is a stocky horse, massive,
measuring 1,20 to 1,35 at withers, its neck is broad and its head
imposing. It has a dorsal stripe and its mane is naturally raised. Its
legs are more or less zebra-striped. So far, it is the only horse still
alive, which has never been ridden successfully on a regular basis.
That is why it can be considered as wild. That is not the only
difference with domestic horses: genetic showed
another specificity. Przewalski’s horse owns 66 chromosomes when
domestic horses only have 64.Historic
Discovery of Przewalski’s horse made certainly laugh Mongolian nomads of the Gobi. They were used to encounter it for centuries and crossbred it regularly with their racehorses in order to increase their stamina.
But scientists of the end of
the XIX century thought that every large mammals were already
described, and when in 1879 Russian exploratory Nicolaï Przewalski
brought an equid hide from the remote Gobi, debate were firstly intense
(is it an ass, a horse or another hybrid?) and the declaration of a new
species: Equus przewalski Poliakov 1881, recalled since, caused a great
sensation. Immediately, the rush started to get individuals to be
fenced in order to see them properly. Approach used nowadays by
scientists to study a species in its habitat was far away from frame of
minds at that time…Capture campaigns sometimes brutal, concurrency with domestic herds whose numbers were increasing and rude winters which can occur in the Gobi then led to the extinction in the wild of the species by the 19seventies. Since, it only lives in captivity where 1600 individuals represent it. Reintroduction projects, including ours, are however re-creating wild populations in the wild.