THANE’S FIELD NOTES
Tahki or Przewalski’s Horse
(Equus ferus przewalskii, Equus przewalskii, or Equus caballus przewalskii) (classification is debated)
The first time I went to Mongolia, I said to myself, “Now, this is a great place to be a horse.” It is a place with no fences. And no phone or electric lines. A land of beautiful and strong people who are tougher than woodpecker lips. Of course, there’s not much shade. If you want trees, drive north for three days to Siberia. What makes the Mongolian steppes so famously good for horses is that this is a nation of high-desert grasslands.
And upon this shadeless grassland, with that strength Mongolians are known for, the people of this country managed to save and restore the last truly wild horses of the world. Officially, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources listed Mongolia’s magnificent tahki—also called Przewalski’s horses—as extinct in the wild in 1968. But thanks to both captive breeding in zoos and leadership by Mongolian wildlife officials, I was able to gaze upon a restored wild herd in the summer of 2007.
My adventures in Mongolia have been in the company of a most amazing PhD wildlife biologist named Munkhtsog. Today he is one of the nation’s leading scientists. It is through him that I have been able to get a glimpse of the effort it has taken to save them.
When humans first walked out of Africa fifty to seventy thousand years ago to spread across Asia and Europe, they viewed the huge herds of wild horses as prey. Eventually, of course, humans domesticated horses from wild stock, selectively breeding them for everything from transportation to work to simple beauty. However, along the way, domestication and spreading human settlements led to the extinction of the word’s wild herds.
Then, to everyone’s great surprise, European explorers reported seeing herds of ancestral wild horses in Central Asia. One of these explorers was Colonel Nikolai Przewalski, the Russian explorer sent by the czar on a Lewis-and-Clark-style voyage of discovery to see what was worth taking in the Gobi Desert. In 1881, Przewalski was the first to describe this mule-like horse as living in small herds of five to fifteen in the Takhiin Shar Nuru Mountains near the edge of the Gobi.
Przewalski’s horses may be mule-shaped, but they are much lovelier creatures. They have tawny hair that is thick for the harsh winters and golden reddish in the early light of dawn, which is the best time to see them. Like many herd animals, they are naturally wary, and mothers are clearly attentive to their foals. Always on the alert, the dominant stallion will move the herd as he sees fit, but all the members stay alert for predators.
By the turn of the twentieth century, there was a frenzy among European zoos to exhibit this already rare and elusive species. Naturally, travel was harsh from southwest Mongolia all the way back to the London and Rotterdam zoos, and many of the horses perished in transit. And as fate would have it, it was a good thing that Prze-walski’s horse was taken into captivity. By 1968, due to hunting and habitat loss (among other factors), the species was completely extinct in the wild.
At that time it was thought that the sounds of wild horse herds would never again be heard on earth. Even in the United States, our “wild” horses, such as the mustang, were once domesticated, then escaped and returned to wild status. The Przewalski’s horse was never domesticated, which is why it is considered the last truly wild horse.
Fortunately, from just a stock of thirteen zoo animals, the species has made a remarkable comeback and can again be seen in Hustai National Park, where they thrive. The horses have even become a draw for foreign tourists, as well as conservationists.
Today more than fifteen hundred Przewalski’s horses live in zoos and captive breeding herds from Ohio to Ukraine, and more than four hundred roam in protected parks in Mongolia and China. The challenge, of course, is that all these animals share the genes of only those thirteen “founder” horses—the last remaining genetic stock after the species was finally extirpated from the wild. As a result, even relatively large herds are more susceptible to disease than in other, more diverse species. Fortunately, the Przewalski’s horse is clearly recognized as a priority to international conservation programs, and intense cooperation continues between the managers of the captive and wild herds to ensure adequate veterinary care and genetic management for the future.
Munkhtsog was part of the team of biologists who, in 1994, released the captive herd to their new home at Hustai National Park in central Mongolia. Keeping the tahki safe and thriving in the park remains an ongoing task—especially because they are now easy prey for wolves. (Captive-bred animals are naive about natural threats, and predation is one of the leading reasons reintroduction efforts fail.) Munkhtsog explained to me that up to 31 percent of the foals born each spring fall prey to wolves. Over time, in areas so vast, conservationists will be able to work to establish a healthy predator–prey balance again. In fact, the percentage of foal loss to wolf predation is steadily, if slowly, declining.
For Munkhtsog the return of the tahki (the animals’ Mongolian name) clearly is not solely about science. “The tahki is a national symbol of great pride to the Mongolian people,” he said to me. “We are a nation of horsemen, and now we have proven to the world how seriously we take our horses.”
One morning, after a long journey in a battered truck, bouncing along rocky, dusty roads, I finally saw the elusive, almost mythical tahki in the Mongolian steppes. Munkhtsog was with me that morning, standing on the crest of a hill just after dawn.
He said that we should sit still on the grass so that we seemed less a threat to the mares with foals. And sure enough, after just an hour or so of watching, the herd of forty-three horses that had been feeding at least a kilometer away began to slowly move our way—until they were passing quite close to us. What struck me most was the beauty of the mares and their apparent concern for their young. The foals appeared oblivious to any threats, but their mothers were wary about almost anything that moved. I noted that the younger the foal, the more it looked like a domestic horse—thin-bodied and long-limbed. But the adults, and particularly the stallions, grew to be thick-bodied with proportionately shorter legs.
As I marveled at the wild herd below, Munkhtsog slapped me on the back and said, “In the US, you have thoroughbreds for racing. But in Mongolia, we have true horses!”