What is a Wild Horse?

The wild horse is the original design of the horse, descended from undomesticated animals who have lived on earth for millions of years. Today they are extinct in much of the world, and only exist naturally in Asia. There are only two subspecies of wild horses that survived to modern times due to direct human involvement. The first is the Tarpan, or Eurasian Wild Horse, and the other is the Mongolian Wild Horse. The Mongolian Wild Horse was at one point listed as extinct in the wild, but since has been found again and through careful conservation has been brought back from the brink of total obliteration with 1500 in zoos providing the basis of a breeding program for reintroduction into the wild. As of now there are just over 250 Wild Mongolian Horses in the wild, and the numbers are hopefully going to increase and bring that species of wild horse back to sustainable levels that will insure the species survival. Wild Horses used to be in nearly every continent, including North America, but were either starved out with climate change - or hunted to extinction. The Tarpan went extinct completely in 1875.

The Przewalski’s Horse (Mongolian Wild Horse) is the last surviving Wild Horse species in the world, unchanged by inter-breeding with domesticated horses. It has 66 chromosomes, whereas the domestic horse has 64 - so genetically it is easily identifiable when they are interbred (any interbred horses have 65 chromosomes). The Mongolian Wild Horse was never domesticated in any form and remains so today. The Mongolian Wild horse is the only equid species capable of producing fertile offspring with a domesticated horse. Named after Russian General Nikolai Przhevalsky of the Russian army was also a natural explorer, and he found it in 1881, and described it in great detail. It is through his work that the horse was made well known enough to eventually be kept in zoos while those in the wild died off.

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