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European Wild Horses; originally posted by Dfoidl
Topic Started: Jan 9 2012, 06:44 PM (28,357 Views)
Roberta


Interesting read:
This Rewilding Europe publication was released two months ago on RE News, “ ‘Rewilding horses in Europe’ – why, how, which and where?” :Contents:
  1. Rewilding Horses
  2. The Role of Wild Horses in European Ecosystems
    • 2.1 Prehistoric Landscapes
    • 2.2 Ecological Impact
  3. Extinct, but not Lost
  4. Fit for Rewilding
    • 4.1 From Domestic Breeds to Wild Horses
    • 4.2 Przewalski’s Horse (Takh)
    • 4.3 Breeds for Rewilding
    • 4.4 Selection Criteria
  5. Selected Horse Breeds
    • 5.1 General
    • 5.2 Overview of Selected Horse Breeds for Rewilding
      • Table of Rewildable Horses
  6. Guidelines for Rewilding Horses
    • 6.1 Rewilding Takes Time!
    • 6.2 Rewilding Defined
    • 6.3 Horse Habitats
    • 6.4 Choosing a Founder Herd
    • 6.5 Ensuring Adaptation
    • 6.6 Human Assistance During Rewilding
    • 6.7 Rewilding Horses and Communication
    • 6.8 Rewilding Horses Pitfalls and Challenges
    • 6.9 Towards Truly Wild Horses



Also highly interesting:
  • Deb Bennett, Robert S. Hoffmann: “Equus caballus Linnaeus, 1758. Horse.”
This is an older paper, but I do not remember having seen it mentioned on this thread yet.

It was originally published on 2 December, 1999 in Mammalian Species (Official Publication of the American Society of Mammalogists)[WP], no. 628, pp. 1–14. This version can be found online at Smith College Science Center: Mammalian SpeciesNumbered Mammalian Species Accounts and Links to PDFs behind the link “628. Horse (Equus caballus)”.

One of the authors, Deb Bennett, republished the paper on their homepage in 2008. There were no changes to the text; in an introductory note Bennett writes that only “one aspect of this paper is now in need of revision, [...] the radiocarbon dates for [an] archaeological site discussed in the ‘Remarks’ section are in error”. But many illustrations have been added. The text is better readable and it is searchable. This version can be found on the Equine Studies Institute website on the Knowledge Base page behind the link “Mammalian Species”; this is the version I am quoting from below.

The paper gives a broad overview over Equus caballus (syn. Equus ferus, Bennett and Hoffmann follow the usage of Wilson and Reeder, 1993), both as it appeared in the early Holocene before the quaternary extinctions and in todays domestic and wild (przewalskii) forms. It explains taxonomy including subspecies, characteristics (morphological and physiological), distribution, fossil record, behaviour, ecology, genetics, conservation status. The paper is not primary research, it rather delineates the state of art in caballoid horse research, as is the purpose of the Mammalian Species publications. Bennett and Hoffmann do not go into any controversies which I am sure must have existed, so I suppose they only give the mainstream point of view.

Especially interesting to me are the subspecies. Bennett and Hoffmann recognise seven living or recently extinct subspecies:
  • E. c. alaskae Hay, 1913 – Lamut, or Beringian horse
  • E. c. caballus Linnaeus, 1758 – Northwestern European Horse
  • E. c. ferus Boddaert, 1785 – Tarpan (syn. gmelini Antonius, sylvestris Brinken)
  • E. c. mexicanus Hibbard, 1955 – American Periglacial Horse (syn. laurentius Hay, midlandensis Quinn)
  • E. c. mosbachensis Reichenau, 1903 – Central European Horse
  • E. c. przewalskii Polyakov. 1881 – Przewalskii Horse, Mongolian Wild Horse (syn. hagenbecki Matschie)
  • E. c. pumpelli Duerst, 1908 – Afro-Turcic Horse (syn. algericus Bagtache, Hadjouis and Eisenmann, 1984)
E. c. lenensis, already discussed somewhere on this thread, would according to this taxonomy supposedly be a junior synonym of E. c. alaskae.


Posted Image

— Holarctic distribution of subspecies of Equus caballus during the Late Glacial, 9,500–15,000 years ago, when melting glacial ice still remained in some places, restricting its range (Source: www.equinestudies.org/ : “Equus caballus Linnaeus, 1758. Horse.”) —


The subspecies diverged as early as 200,000 – 300,000 years ago, according to genetic analysis. The domestic horse was much later domesticated (~ 6,000 years ago) from several of these subspecies in parallel.

Bennett and Hoffmann state that
[t]hese [subspecies] are delimited, and their characters inferred, from
  • the morphology and distribution of late Pleistocene to early Holocene fossils,
  • historical descriptions of Eurasian wild horses,
  • and finally, the characters of the early breeds of domesticated horses.

  • (Bullet points not in the original)
Especially the last seems a bit audacious. They go on to explain that
[b]reeds established prior to 1500 exhibit a pattern of geographic distribution and morphological stability that is the result of conservative breeding based on the “native broodmare”. The different domestic breeds of horse are each originally derived from different wild populations distributed from Europe to the Middle East. Given the multiple origins of early breeds [...], and subsequent conservative breeding, it is possible to infer the general characters of now-extinct wild populations from the conserved characters of their descendants [...].
But people did not stay put and especially during the European migration period whole populations where on the move taking all their mobile belongings including all their animals with them, already in prehistoric times the Proto-Indo-Europeans spread throughout western Eurasia presumably as horse nomads, even in historic times Asian steppe people invaded Europe on horseback again and again, the Vikings took their horses with them wherever they went, and the Arabs conquering the Iberian peninsula also came on horseback. Against this background the “native broodmare concept” seems a bit optimistic.

Further according to the paper, the modern domestic horse is descended from the four western original subspecies, caballus, ferus, mosbachensis and pumpelli. The three eastern subspecies, alaskae, mexicanus and przewalskii, had no part in the domestication process. This seems plausible; and in the case of mexicanus is obvious.

From this Bennett and Hoffmann infer that all four western subspecies had 2n=64 chromsomes, like today’s domestic horse. All three eastern subspecies are inferred on the basis of przewalskii to have had 2n=66 chromosomes. Why this should be so is not clear to me, as nowhere in the paper is stated that these three subspecies where related closer to each other than to the western subspecies.

Finally Bennett and Hoffmann describe the characteristics of the seven subspecies (general characteristics of the species are described elsewhere in the paper):

Geographic variation in wild horses was principally in size, skull, limb length and color. The only surviving wild subspecies, przewalskii, which until recently ranged from Siberia through Mongolia, is of moderate size with a relatively large head and thick neck, yellowish dun in color, erect mane, and with dark mid-dorsal stripe poorly expressed and clearly evident only in summer pelage [...]. The molariform teeth are large, and the profile of the nasal bones straight to slightly concave [...].
To the north and east of the Przewalski horse, the Beringian wild horse (alaskae) ranged along the arctic border of Siberia and eastward beyond Alaska [...]. It was similar to the Przewalski horse, but its coloration was probably much lighter, in dilute shades of dun in summer pelage to nearly white in winter [...].
South of the Wisconsinian glacial margin of the Great Plains, and elsewhere in North America, the American Periglacial horse (mexicanus) developed in parallel. E. c. mexicanus possessed a skull and dentition similar to that of alaskae and przewalskii, but was larger, with a longer head and concave facial profile [...].

The tarpan (E. c. ferus) of the western Eurasian steppe and forest steppe-zone [...] averaged smaller, ca. 130 cm high at the withers. It was mouse-gray in color, with a well-developed black mid-dorsal stripe, partly falling mane, slightly smaller molariform teeth, a more pointed muzzle, and a slightly concave facial profile [...].
The northwestern European subspecies, caballus, averaged larger than ferus or przewalskii, but dwarfed insular populations (“island ponies”) also occur [...]. E. c. caballus was distinguished by large, round feet and a straight or undulating facial profile. The body build was stocky or even bulky, with a heavy neck and steep pelvic angle [...]. Judging from domestic descendants, the pelage was long and thick, with a tendency for the growth of long hairs (“feathers”) from the posterolateral surfaces of the matapodials; the mane was probably long and falling.
In contrast to caballus to the northwest, the Central European horse (E. c. mosbachensis) had a long narrow head in which the eye was placed fairly high, with a straight to convex nasal profile. Taller than any other wild forms of the horse, mosbachensis possessed a shallow torso, long flat neck, and long, sturdy legs [...].The guard hairs of the coat of its descendants grow long in winter pelage, but lack the thick undercoat grown by its more northern neighbors, producing a shaggy, rather than a woolly appearance.
The southernmost subspecies, E. c. pumpelli [...], was small in size but had relatively the longest, slenderest legs and ears. The facial profile was straight or concave (“dished”), due to a negative cranial flexion and tendency for inflation of the frontal sinuses. As in mosbachensis, the cross section of the torax was a flattened oval, not rounded as in caballus, ferus, and przewalskii. There was a tendency to shorten the lumbar span by the loss or fusion of the posterior lumbar vertebrae [...]. Domestic Afro-Turkic horses are always less hirsute than other forms, and in the wild state probably possessed a short, scant, erect mane [...].

(Bold type and subparagraphing not in the original)
Edited by Roberta, Jan 11 2015, 05:00 AM.
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Roberta


Vedelshave wild horse

Prehistoric wild horse skeleton dated approx. 10,000 years B.P.,
found in Vedelshave, Ejby, Funen, Denmark

Posted Image
(“Vildhesten fra Vedelshave.” Source: http://stavidskommune.blogspot.dk/2014/02/danmarkshistorien-i-4d-p-margin-bottom-0.html)

Bones positioned differently:

Posted Image

(Source: www.ar-arkiv.dk/?page_id=46)

Skull of the Vedelshave wild horse:

Posted Image

(Source: www.sorraia.org/questions-answers.html)
Edited by Roberta, Mar 18 2015, 06:14 AM.
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Dfoidl
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Oh, thanks for your extensive posts, I did not see them because I NEVER recieved ANY notification emails from this forum and I don't know how to change that, so I did not know you wrote some new posts here.
I'm going to respond later on.
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Taipan
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Predominately related to the Przewalski's horse, which is now a feral horse rather than a wild horse!

Surprising new study redraws family tree of domesticated and 'wild' horses

February 22, 2018, University of Kansas

Posted Image
Thought to be the world's last-remaining 'wild' horse, Przewalski's horses actually descend from horses domesticated by the Botai people about 5,500 years ago. Credit: Lee Boyd

There are no such things as "wild" horses anymore.

Research published in Science today overturns a long-held assumption that Przewalski's horses, native to the Eurasian steppes, are the last wild horse species on Earth. Instead, phylogenetic analysis shows Przewalski's horses are feral, descended from the earliest-known instance of horse domestication by the Botai people of northern Kazakhstan some 5,500 years ago.

Further, the new paper finds that modern domesticated horses didn't descend from the Botai horses, an assumption previously held by many scientists.

"This was a big surprise," said co-author Sandra Olsen, curator-in-charge of the archaeology division of the Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas, who led archaeological work at known Botai villages. "I was confident soon after we started excavating Botai sites in 1993 that we had found the earliest domesticated horses. We went about trying to prove it, but based on DNA results Botai horses didn't give rise to today's modern domesticated horses—they gave rise to the Przewalski's horse."

The findings signify there are no longer true "wild" horses left, only feral horses that descend from horses once domesticated by humans, including Przewalski's horses and mustangs that descend from horses brought to North America by the Spanish.

"This means there are no living wild horses on Earth—that's the sad part," said Olsen. "There are a lot of equine biologists who have been studying Przewalskis, and this will be a big shock to them. They thought they were studying the last wild horses. It's not a real loss of biodiversity—but in our minds, it is. We thought there was one last wild species, and we're only just now aware that all wild horses went extinct."

Posted Image
Some of the Botai horses were found to carry genetic variants causing white and leopard coat spotting patterns. Credit: Ludovic Orlando, reworked by Sean Goddard and Alan Outram.

Many of the horse bones and teeth Olsen excavated at two Botai sites in Kazakhstan, called Botai and Krasnyi Yar, were used in the phylogenetic analysis. The international team of researchers behind the paper sequenced the genomes of 20 horses from the Botai and 22 horses from across Eurasia that spanned the last 5,500 years. They compared these ancient horse genomes with already published genomes of 18 ancient and 28 modern horses.

"Phylogenetic reconstruction confirmed that domestic horses do not form a single monophyletic group as expected if descending from Botai," the authors wrote. "Earliest herded horses were the ancestors of feral Przewalski's horses but not of modern domesticates."

Olsen said the findings give rise to a new scientific quest: locating the real origins of today's domesticated horses.

"What's interesting is that we have two different domestication events from slightly different species, or separate sub-species," she said. (The Przewalski's horse's taxonomic position is still debated.) "It's thought that modern-day domesticated horses came from Equus ferus, the extinct European wild horse. The problem is they were thought to have existed until the early 1900s. But, the remains of two individuals in St. Petersburg, Russia, are probably feral, too, or at least probably had some domesticated genes."

Posted Image
Olsen led excavation of Botai sites associated with the earliest-known domestication of horses. Credit: Sandra Olsen

Olsen began excavating Botai village sites in Kazakhstan in 1993 after the fall of the Soviet Union made the region accessible to western scientists. Some of the horse remains collected by Olsen were tested as part of the new study showing their ancestry of modern-day Przewalskis.

The Botai's ancestors were nomadic hunters until they became the first-known culture to domesticate horses around 5,500 years ago, using horses for meat, milk, work and likely transportation.

"Once they domesticated horses they became sedentary, with large villages of up to 150 or more houses," said Olsen, who specializes in zooarchaeology, or the study of animal remains from ancient human occupation sites. "They lived primarily on horse meat, and they had no agriculture. We had several lines of evidence that supported domestication. The fact the Botai were sedentary must have meant they had domesticated animals, or plants, which they didn't have. More than 95 percent of the bones from the Botai sites were from horses—they were in a sense mono-cropping one species with an incredible focus. If they were hunting horses on foot, they would have quickly depleted bands of horses in the vicinity of the villages and would have had to go farther afield to hunt—it wouldn't have been feasible or supported that large human population."

The KU researcher also cited bone artifacts from Botai sites used to make rawhide thongs that might have been fashioned into bridles, lassos, whips, riding crops and hobbles, as further evidence of horse domestication. Moreover, the Botai village sites include horse corrals.

"We found a corral that contained high levels of nitrogen and sodium from manure and urine," said Olsen. "It was very concentrated within that corral. The final smoking gun was finding residues of mares' milk in the pottery. It's commonplace today in Mongolia and Kazakhstan to milk horses—when it's fermented it has considerable nutritional value and is very high in vitamins."

Posted Image
The Botai buried horses with their snouts pointing southeast toward the rising sun. Credit: Sandra Olsen

Interestingly, Olsen found that after slaughtering horses, the Botai buried some horse skulls and necks in pits with their snouts facing the southeast, toward where the sun rose in the morning in autumn. Mongols and Kazakhs slaughter most of their horses at that time of year because that is when they retain the most amount of nutritious fat in their bodies.

"It's interesting because throughout the Indo-European diaspora there's a strong connection between the sun god and the horse," she said. "It may be that Botai people spoke an early proto-Indo-European language, and they also connected the horse to the sun god. Later in time, and this idea is in the historical record for the Indo-European diaspora, it was believed the sun god was born in the east and rode across the sky in a chariot, pulled by white horses. According to the belief, he would then die in the west and be reborn every day."

The team behind the paper believe Przewalski's horses likely escaped from domestic Botai herds in eastern Kazakhstan or western Mongolia.

Posted Image
Excavation at the Botai site, Northern Kazakhstan, 2017. Credit: Alan Outram / University of Exeter

"They started developing a semi-wild lifestyle like our mustangs, but they still have a wild appearance," Olsen said. "This is partly why biologists assumed they were genuinely wild animals. They have an upright mane, something associated with wild equids. They also have a dun coat, like the ones you see in the Ice Age cave paintings in France and Spain made when horses were wild. Their size, however, is very similar to what you see at Botai and other sites."

By 1969, Przewalski's horses were declared extinct in the wild, and all living today originated from just 15 individuals captured around 1900. Today, there are approximately 2,000 Przewalski's horses, all descended from those captured horses, and they have been reintroduced on the Eurasian steppes. In a sense, the horses have fared better than the peoples who once domesticated them.

"The Botai people seem to have vanished from their homeland in northern Kazakhstan," said Olsen. "Perhaps they migrated eastward to Mongolia since the later Bronze Age people there shared the practice of ritually burying the horse's head and neck pointing toward the rising sun in the autumn, the time of year they were slaughtered. That's a very specific shared trait."

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-redraws-family-tree-domesticated-wild.html




Journal Reference:
C. Gaunitz el al., "Ancient genomes revisit the ancestry of domestic and Przewalski's horses," Science (2018). science.sciencemag.org/lookup/ … 1126/science.aao3297

Abstract
The Eneolithic Botai culture of the Central Asian steppes provides the earliest archaeological evidence for horse husbandry, ~5,500 ya, but the exact nature of early horse domestication remains controversial. We generated 42 ancient horse genomes, including 20 from Botai. Compared to 46 published ancient and modern horse genomes, our data indicate that Przewalski’s horses are the feral descendants of horses herded at Botai and not truly wild horses. All domestic horses dated from ~4,000 ya to present only show ~2.7% of Botai-related ancestry. This indicates that a massive genomic turnover underpins the expansion of the horse stock that gave rise to modern domesticates, which coincides with large-scale human population expansions during the Early Bronze Age.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/02/21/science.aao3297
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Claudiu Constantin Nicolaescu
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But the Przewalski's horses are now wild.
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Taipan
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Claudiu Constantin Nicolaescu
Feb 23 2018, 04:28 PM
But the Przewalski's horses are now wild.


They live a wild lifestyle now, but their ancestors were domestic:

"Research published in Science today overturns a long-held assumption that Przewalski's horses, native to the Eurasian steppes, are the last wild horse species on Earth. Instead, phylogenetic analysis shows Przewalski's horses are feral, descended from the earliest-known instance of horse domestication by the Botai people of northern Kazakhstan some 5,500 years ago."
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Richardrli
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So it's like the dingo, an animal that is fully wild today but the lineage can be traced back to domesticated populations from many millennia ago. For practical purposes, both the dingo and Przewalski's horse haven't been under domestic conditions for such a long time that IMO they are correctly labeled as wild animals today.
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Claudiu Constantin Nicolaescu
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For me wild, feral, tamed, and domestic are just labels. They are all animals, and they deserve our respect and protection.
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