Summary: <p>It’s the last episode of 2017 and we’re going out in style, learning about some unusual horses!</p> <p>A Przewalski’s horse PHOTO TAKEN BY ME AT HELSINKI ZOO I cropped out as many poops as I could:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-421" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Przwalkski-horse-300x263.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="263"></p> <p>A Heck horse, also sometimes called a tarpan. Photo taken by *squints* Klaus Rudloff in Berlin:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-422" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/heckhorse-300x226.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="226"></p> <p>A Moyle breed horse with a bossed forehead:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-423" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/moyle-horse-bossed-forehead-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225"></p> <p><strong>Show transcript:</strong></p> <p>Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.</p> <p>This week we’re going to learn about an animal I’ve been bonkers crazy about since I was a kid, the horse. But not just regular horses. We’re going to learn about some strange and little-known horses, the best kind of all.</p> <p>All domestic horses are the same subspecies, Equus ferus caballus, even though the various breeds may look very different. Even mustangs and other populations of wild horses—more properly called feral horses—are the same subspecies. Feral just means a domestic animal that lives like a wild animal, like a stray dog. Only one truly wild horse remains these days, Przewalski’s [pzha-VALski’s] horse, Equus ferus przewalskii. I’ve been pronouncing it Perzwalski’s horse my whole life until today. So let’s start the episode by talking about that one.</p> <p>Przewalski’s horse is native to the steppes of central Asia, especially Mongolia. It’s currently considered a subspecies of horse, but some researchers think it should be its own species. It went extinct in the wild in 1969. Fortunately, in 1900 15 of the horses had been captured and sold to various zoos. Some of the pairs reproduced, but by 1945, only 13 of the descendants remained. Of those 13, two were hybrids, one of them with a domestic horse, one of them with a tarpan. More about tarpans in a minute. Nine of the 13 were used in a careful breeding program, which was so successful that by 1992, Przewalski’s horse started to be reintroduced to the wild.</p> <p>I’ve seen Przewalski’s horses, by the way. They had some in the Helsinki Zoo. Check the show notes for a picture taken by me and not swiped by me off the internet.</p> <p>Przewalski’s horse is stockier than domestic horses, dun in color with a pale belly, with a short, erect mane. The legs are frequently faintly striped. The average horse stands about 13 hands high at the withers, which is the shoulder hump, or four feet four inches, or 132 cm. Its social structure is pretty much the same as the domestic horse’s. It lives in bands consisting of a group of mares and their young, and a stallion that leads the band t</p>
