Words can mean different things to different people and that can have major ramifications, as was brought home to me by a recent report on new findings through DNA research on Przewalski’s horses. It has been assumed by most conservationists that the Przewalski’s horse is an endangered Asian wildlife species, and the last true wild horse (not counting zebras, also members of the horse genus, Equus). Some thought it was a subspecies of the original wild horse, Equus ferus, now extinct in the wild although its decedents have been domesticated into a wide range of different shapes, sizes, colors, and patterns through intensively selective breeding by horse breeders and now known as domesticated variant called Equus ferus caballus. Others considered it to be a full species in its own right, Equus przewalskii. Still others wondered if either version was correct.
Recent DNA analyses now have shown that Przewalski’s horses’ ancestors were, at one time, domesticated – that means that instead of being subjected to the forces of “natural” selection, with the elements of nature determining which heritable characteristics were passed on, and which eliminated, human herdsmen did the decision-making about which horse bred with which, meaning they could choose for heritable traits, such as color, or endurance, or tractability, that were of interest or value to them. That said, in fact Przewalski’s horses don’t look domesticated… being all rather similar in size, color, shape, and so on, like any other wild animal species, and they certainly have, for as long as scientists have been studying them, been living a wild, free life on the steppes of Asia, although there was a period when they were extinct in the wild – but that does not stop them from being a “natural” species. But, because they, like the mustangs found in western North America or on islands off our continent’s east coast, are now believed to be descended from domestic horses, they are not being called “wild” but “feral,” which, outside of conservation and wildlife management circles, usually means “wild,” or at least “untamed.”
Is that important? As a guiding rule in policy making by governments far greater gravitas is given to a native, wild species, than a feral one, as defined by conservationists. There are zillions of horses after all, so does it matter that some are running around, unowned, in Nevada, or Alberta, or Assateague Island?
In North America true wild horses did exist until just over 7,000 years ago, a short time in geological and evolutionary terms. Our current wild mustangs and ponies fill an ecological niche left by the loss of the original North American horses, many other herbivorous ungulates, and great herds of bison. The fact that Przewalski’s horses were not turned into different breeds indicates a more brief, and ancient, period of domestication and to all intents it is a wild, native Asian animal as deserving of conservation protection as any other.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry