Crazy for Horses

Előszó

The Oldest Breed on Earth
It's hard to imagine that, of the hundreds of different breeds of horses we have today, all trace bac]< to a single wild type, but it's true. The horse didn't always have the familiar look we now know, either. Imagine him as a little swamp-dwelling creature, about the size of a border collie, with five toes on each foot! That was the first ancestor of the horse, Hyracotherium (sometimes called Eohippus, the dawn horse), who lived some 50 million years ago.
The horse has one of the most complete fossil records, so scientists have been able to trace horses' development over the millennia, as they gradually got larger and switched from living in marshy areas to the open plains. Because they needed to run on hard ground rather than tiptoe through squishy footing, they also lost most of their toes, until they were standing on a specially adapted middle toenail called a hoof. It took millions of years, but eventually little Hyracotherium became mighty Equus, the modern horse.
That wild ancestor of the modern horse is still with us, in the form of the Przewalski's Horse (pronounced serve-OW-ski). Przewalski's Horse first showed up during the last Ice Age. He has survived in remote areas of Asia to this day. At one time he was thought to be extinct, but Russian explorer Colonel Przewalsl<i discovered a herd running free in an isolated part of Mongolia in the mid-1800s. Unfortunately, human hunters have made the Przewalski's Horse extinct in the wild, but zoos around the world are actively breeding this prehistoric horse, and some are now starting programs to re-introduce them to their natural habitat.
At first glance Przewalski's Horse looks more like a mule than a horse. He is small and stocky, averaging about 13 hands (1.3 metres), and he is always a yellow dun colour with what's called a dorsal stripe down his spine, and zebra striping on his legs. His brushy mane stands straight up and is shed completely every year. He has no forelock, and his tail looks like a donkey's, with a switch of hair just at the bottom. He has a rather large head for his body size (some would call him ugly) and he is definitely wild — very suspicious of humans, and likely to attack you if you come too close!
But despite his appearance, most experts agree that he is indeed the ancestor of all modern horses, from the elegant Arabian to the enormous Shire. When humans first tamed the horse, it was likely an animal that looked very much like the Przewalski's Horse of today. It is selective breeding, over the centuries, that has given us all the wonderful types of horses we now know. Vissza