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European Wild Horses; originally posted by Dfoidl
Topic Started: Jan 9 2012, 06:44 PM (28,362 Views)
Copperhead
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Phil, thanks for clearing that up! I did not know that!

Firefly, mustangs originated from domestic stock. They are actually domestic animals, bred for domestic puposes and then set free. They are no more wild than any domestic horse that hasn't been handled by humans. What was the other thing you were refering to when you said "They are much more than that"? I feel like I've missed something.

This is a picture of mini with extreme dun (primitive) markings including the dorsal stripe, leg barring and even a fishbone mark:
Posted Image

Another image:
Posted Image

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firefly
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Quote:
 
Firefly, mustangs originated from domestic stock. They are actually domestic animals, bred for domestic puposes and then set free. They are no more wild than any domestic horse that hasn't been handled by humans. What was the other thing you were refering to when you said "They are much more than that"? I feel like I've missed something.


Yes, I know that mustangs are domesticated horses, but lots of them know how to deal well on the wild (even given a different set of climates, landscapes, predators and vegetation types) and some of them (like the ones that I have posted) actually derive (at least partially) from a group of wild horses that were domesticated in the Iberian Peninsula.



Edited by firefly, Feb 3 2014, 08:35 AM.
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Dfoidl
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Quote:
 
and some of them (like the ones that I have posted) actually derive (at least partially) from a group of wild horses that were domesticated in the Iberian Peninsula.


Reference?
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Copperhead
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Dfoidl
Feb 5 2014, 02:21 AM
Quote:
 
and some of them (like the ones that I have posted) actually derive (at least partially) from a group of wild horses that were domesticated in the Iberian Peninsula.


Reference?
Mustangs came from Spanish stock, where the Iberian Peninsula is. Though this happened about 3,000 years ago in Europe. Mustangs still have spanish blood, but to consider them closely related to their wild ancestors is a little far fetched. Thats like claiming your horse is spectacularly bred because he has Man O' War genes. The horse you have might carry Man O' War lineage, but he is a far cry from the actual original horse itself.

3,000 years of domestication basically means the color might still be there, but the wild temperment and appearance has been lost due to selective breeding. Unless the spanish took great care to keep their horses appearance conformation the way they found them in the wild (which we know to not be true), the actual wild iberian horse in the mustang has been lost over the span of 3,000 years.

I again reiterate that many domestic stock breeds have primitive markings. It doesn't mean the breed itself is primitive and represents the original item. Just because your horse is chestnut and has Man O' War lines doesn't mean it is the original Man O' War. That structure has been lost with the changing times and selective breeding.

All horses in the Americas came from European stock. Many sources state earlier domestication in Europe, but I used a very conservative number to show that even if the mustang came from a later time of domestication, it is still very far removed from what its ancestor's were.
Edited by Copperhead, Feb 5 2014, 04:21 AM.
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Copperhead
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firefly
Feb 3 2014, 08:16 AM
Quote:
 
Firefly, mustangs originated from domestic stock. They are actually domestic animals, bred for domestic puposes and then set free. They are no more wild than any domestic horse that hasn't been handled by humans. What was the other thing you were refering to when you said "They are much more than that"? I feel like I've missed something.


Yes, I know that mustangs are domesticated horses, but lots of them know how to deal well on the wild (even given a different set of climates, landscapes, predators and vegetation types)







Any horse you set loose will have the ability to thrive in an environment that the mustang now lives in. Matter of fact, some horses are actually set loose into the mustang herds to try and "improve" the breeds appearance, hence the reason why we have so many draft-type mustangs roaming around.
Edited by Copperhead, Feb 5 2014, 04:24 AM.
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Dfoidl
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Congratulations to Copperhead, I am really happy to meet another realistic mind here. ;)
Edited by Dfoidl, Feb 5 2014, 07:21 AM.
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Scalesofanubis
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Dfoidl
Dec 7 2013, 09:06 PM
Quote:
 
The Nazis had this whole mythology about some sort of Aryan proto-German master race thing that made them fetishize all kinds of things about prehistoric Germany. So they ended up being ALL about trying to resurrect old German wildlife.

That's complete nonsense invented by tabloids, breeding-back has no connection to nazism.
Other than they seem to have rather liked the idea.

They are hardly the only ones, and they definitely didn't start it. It's just one of the things that predate them that they ran with.
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Dfoidl
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Quote:
 
Other than they seem to have rather liked the idea.

They? Only Göring cared about that because he was a "passionate hunter" besides being an abominable war criminal. The other "relevant" nazis didn't care at all, if they even knew about it. That story is so trivial that it isn't even worth mentioning. But it seems to raise the emotion of some people, so no surprise that tabloids hype it. And mind that tabloids like to invent things. Simply forget that...
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Copperhead
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I also wanted to add a couple more interesting points to the topic.

Most horses have long, draping manes not only as a defense against falling rain. The mane's roots do not have any nerve endings. This adaptation was helpful when the horse would be attacked by larger predators (cats, for instance) who would grapple the neck for purchase before biting at the throat (much like a lion would grapple a zebra by the neck to flip it). The mane (and tail), which does not have nerves in the roots, tears out and leaves the horse free to run. The thicker the mane, the better chance the horse has of escaping without much injury while the predator is left with a paw or jaw full of hair.

I've seen this with horse/human interactions as well. The human grabs the mane of an unruly horse to try and stop it, and the horse takes off. The human is left with a fistfull of mane.

Leopard horses have been found to exist very early on (which as covered already). And I support the theory that perhaps that was an adaptation for a snowy world. Most spotted horses (not to be confused with painted horses) have very thin manes and tails. They are actually notorious for it. This could be a trait it adopted in a snowy world. Why grow hair where its not needed when your energy would be put to better use covering a more important area of the body?

Posted Image

Dappling and spotting are two different things. Dappling (which can be seen on some of the dartmoor photos) is a sign of a healthy animal and is not a genetic coat color. Spotting is a genetic coat color. That would explain why this cave painting (which was pictured before) shows a dun horse with subtle spots. The horse was clearly dun, but it was healthy and dappled.
Posted Image
Posted Image

This picture could have represented the spotted horse which I pictured above. Many spots but with a darker head
Posted Image

I'm still not sure a program to breed back the Tarpan would be successful. The Quagga project, in my opinion, is a complete failure. They are breeding zebras with similar coloration, but the Quagga had a completely different coat pattern than the "Quagga zebras" that are being bred now. The stripe patterns do not match. However, they continue to breed the zebra for a brown butt regardless and are shamelessly labeling it a Quagga.

The Tarpan, if it was real at all, is a lost breed. You can not breed back an animal and get the same genetic code it once was. You might be able to get the similar coat and bone structure, but you can not recreate the DNA.

ETA: Also something I have noticed in the earlier posts: A chestnut horse can not have a true dorsal stripe. A chesnut can have countershading, which may look like a dorsal stripe, but it will never have a true dorsal stripe.
Edited by Copperhead, Feb 5 2014, 02:31 PM.
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Dfoidl
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The Tarpan, if it was real at all,

It's a matter of definition. There is much confusion around that term, you can either define it as a term for all members of the Equus ferus ferus subspecies as it is now widespread in the literature, or you can be strict and use it only for the animals the tatars called "tarpan", what would not be very helpful IMO because we don't even know what they exactly indicated with it. I tend to avoid the term because of that confusion, although I would really like to use it for predomestic members of the ferus subspecies, because it is much shorter and appealing than "European/western wild horse" and both terms do not rule out each other.
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Dfoidl
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Mustangs came from Spanish stock, where the Iberian Peninsula is.

I am very aware of that, I was asking for a reference for firefly's claim that they descend from horses that were locally domesticated on the Iberian peninsular.

But it looks like our firefly is once again incapable of providing solid references for his optimistic claims.
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phil90
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As far as I know the horse domestication event in Western Europe, possibly Iberian Peninsula is a theory based on studies on the haplogroup L (Mitochondrial genomes from modern horses reveal the major haplogroups that underwent domestication, Achilli et al. 2012) and on autosomal microsatellite variation in Iberian horse breeds.Iberian and Caspian breeds show an higher genetic diversity than Central European horses, suggesting that those areas were refugia for wild horses during Ice Age and that those wild horses had a role in the domestication (European Domestic Horses Originated in Two Holocene Refugia; Warmuth et al. 2011) . About mtDNA-the L (possibly derived from Iberian wild horse) is one of the most widespread horse haplogroup in Europe so it's possible that some mustangs show it..but I've no references for that...I know that American Pint Horse has L..while a Chincoteague Pony, that is said to descend directly from Spanish horses, has A haplogroup that is more widespread in Asia rather than in Europe or Middle East . I think that we can not say that Mustang animals that have primitive markings are for sure of Iberian origins..moreover it's risky to assume that Primitive Mustangs descend directly from Iberian Wild Horses.
Edited by phil90, Feb 6 2014, 04:31 AM.
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Copperhead
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Dfoidl
Feb 5 2014, 10:05 PM
Quote:
 
Mustangs came from Spanish stock, where the Iberian Peninsula is.

I am very aware of that, I was asking for a reference for firefly's claim that they descend from horses that were locally domesticated on the Iberian peninsular.

But it looks like our firefly is once again incapable of providing solid references for his optimistic claims.
Oh, I know. I get the feeiling that Firefly has personally researched and studied these animals on a much higher level than most, but I'm finding many claims in his posts to be logically wrong in horses as we know it. He has confused some color genetics and also believes the mane is used for protection against rain. Though I have no formal schooling on equine genetics, I'm fairly knowledgable on the subject with over 20 years experience in the horse industry (training/breeding/etc). This thread has proved to be very interesting and informative.

I really have nothing to add to the European Wild Horse as I am in the learning stages. A friend of mine who specializes in ancient equine genetics read this thread and mentiond that the Tarpan may have been a breed with a different social structure than most other horses. She states that these claims derived from trophy hunters however, so the claims may be shoddy at best. Hunters with no experience in an animal's field rarely know what they're seeing.

She also has some very good information on the "stripes to spots" idea which is too involved for me to repeat. I hope she eventually joins and adds to the conversation.

I'd also like to add that I am still trying to get through the 6 pages on this topic as my concentration is really that poor. It is taking me a while to read and reply so my responses may be outdated.

From one open mind to the next, its great to be here :) I find these topics very fascinating. Do we have any skeletal evidence that we can clearly label "Tarpan"? Any DNA to analyze? I'd like to think that if the species was, in fact, a species then someone somewhere would have identified something which belonged to it or grouped it with something.

Could the Tarpan be just a color breed? Meaning it had no distinguishing differences between other horses of it's type other than to only produce a specific color. We see this in mustangs. There are some mustang bands which are isolated that only produce a certain type of color (for the majority of the time), and we have given them different names as if they were a seperate breed of wild horse.
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maestro tomberi
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Now that I see this thread, I wonder what would be the ancestors of the Asturcón, the wild horse of Asturias. This horse is only given in our small region, not anywhere else in Spain.

It's noticeable they have a lesser height and look more stocky a regular horse may look like. They have been almost extinct due to industrilization, and nowadays there only survive some of them in the mountain zones of the region. Of course, they are protected.

Posted Image

Posted Image
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Dfoidl
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I get the feeiling that Firefly has personally researched and studied these animals on a much higher level than most

He has the advantage that he can read spanish and portuguese, and most of the texts on Iberian landraces are, not surprisingly, in those languages. But his use of sources and anecdotical claims is relatively problematic, as are his preconceptions and the baselines of the projects he is involved in that he thinks he has to follow.
Apart from that, little of what is written on domestic breeds (especially of their breeding associations and their advocates) is objective and well-grounded, and firefly rarely scrutinizes claims that support the conceptions he is in favour of, while he is over-skeptical on evidence that contradicts them and tends to argue in an improper way. That's my honest opinion.

Quote:
 
From one open mind to the next, its great to be here :) I find these topics very fascinating. Do we have any skeletal evidence that we can clearly label "Tarpan"?


Here you have the skull of the so-called Cherson Tarpan, it's the individual of which the only known photo exists: http://www.vera-eisenmann.com/IMG/jpg/C31_Tarpan_CraMdProf2_4-1200.jpg But it seems that it might be a hybrid of a wild horse and some escaped domestic horse.

Quote:
 
Could the Tarpan be just a color breed?

Again, this depends on the definition of the meaning of the word "Tarpan". If you define it as a colloquial term for the wild Equus ferus ferus, as many contemporary authors do, it is just that (and no breed by the way). And if we try to use it only in the sense that the Tatars originally used it, we have the problem that we don't really know and it becomes a worthless name. I don't see why people see this as the more advantageous alternative, but I understand if someone totally rejects the word "Tarpan".
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