Reversing Extinction

Meet Przewalski’s (shuh-VAL-skee) horse, affectionately known as the “P-horse” or “takhi,” which means spirit in Mongolia. The P-horse looks like a mash-up of its equine relatives. Picture a horse with a large, broad head; a donkey’s stocky body; and a zebra’s cropped, mohawk-like mane.

P-horses are the last of the world’s actual wild horses. Like the American Mustang, today’s “wild” horses descend from domesticated horses that escaped their herds and adapted to life without humans. In contrast, humans never domesticated P-horses, which means they never tamed and rode them, or used these wild horses on farms.

P-horses once roamed throughout Europe and Asia. But, farms and livestock overtook their grazing land, pushing P-horses east. Finally, P-horses settled in the steppes of Mongolia, a country in Asia between Russia and China. Mongolia had vast lands for grazing, but the habitat was harsh. The temperature reaches 104 degrees Fahrenheit in summer and 50 degrees below zero in winter. P-horses grew thick, fuzzy winter coats as protection from the bitter cold and shed them in the summer heat.

Scientists did not document or name the P-horse as a species until 1881. The P-horse came to their attention when Nikolai Przewalski, a geographer and explorer, sent a skull to the Zoological Museum of the Russian Academy of Science. Scientists concluded the skull came from a wild horse and named the horse after Przewalski.

Sadly, in less than 100 years, the P-horse went from scientific discovery to extinct in the wild. A combination of factors led to their untimely end. In the early 1900s, a German merchant named Carl Hagenbeck captured P-horse foals and sold them to circuses and zoos around the world. To capture foals, hunters often killed the herd’s dominant stallion disrupting the natural breeding of P-horses. In addition, Mongolians interbred P-horses with domesticated horses which reduced the number of purebred, wild P-horses even more. Farmers and livestock continued to push P-horses from their habitat. Finally, harsh winters led these wild horses to the brink of extinction. By 1970, P-horses were declared extinct in the wild.

These once wild animals urgently needed human help. So conservation groups and zoos around the world committed to breeding P-horses. In about 70 years, P-horse numbers skyrocketed from only 31 P-horses living in two European zoos to nearly 1,000 horses living in 129 zoos in 33 different countries.

One Swiss behavioral ecologist named Claudia Feh spent years breeding P-horses at a zoo in France and reintroduced a herd back into the wild in 2003. Feh and her team flew the horses to Mongolia in the cargo holds of large planes, feeding them apples and soothing the horses with stories during the long trip. Once the aircraft landed and the cargo doors opened, the zoo-bred horses ran into their native Mongolian habitat.

Today, more than 500 P-horses graze the Mongolian steppes due to captive breeding and reintroducing P-horses into the wild. With growing numbers, The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species reclassified P-horses from extinct in the wild to critically endangered in 2008. P-horse upgraded again in 2011 from critically endangered to endangered.

Committed scientists saved P-horses from extinction. But harsh winters, competition for land, and interbreeding with domestic horses still threaten P-horses in Mongolia. To survive, P-horses need ongoing help.

Mongolia has established national parks and reserves where P-horses can safely live. Second, scientists around the world continue to bolster P-horse numbers through captive breeding. In 2013, the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, DC celebrated the birth of Anne, the first P-horse foal born through artificial insemination. The institute hopes artificial insemination will allow for more efficient breeding as zoos can share P-horse sperm rather than moving male horses, which is costly and traumatic for the animals. Finally, scientists continue to monitor P-horse numbers in Mongolia and study their genetic diversity to ensure that herds maintain healthy wild populations.