hawkeyetoo: sciencefriday:Researchers discover there are no more wild horses left anywhere on Eart
hawkeyetoo: sciencefriday: Researchers discover there are no more wild horses left anywhere on Earth. The wild mustang is an iconic image of the American West, but its name is misleading. Mustangs aren’t wild—they’re a feral population of domesticated horses brought to the U.S. by the Spanish almost 500 years ago. Until recently, scientists believed the only horses in the world left untouched by humans were the Przewalski subspecies, in central Asia. But in a surprising study published in the journal Science this week, scientists report that what we thought we knew about Przewalski ancestry was wrong. They too are descended from a type of domesticated horse, used by the Botai people of northern Kazakhstan—which means there are actually no more wild horses left anywhere on earth. Dr. Alan Outram, Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Exeter, joins Ira to discuss the good and the bad in this case of mistaken equine identity. Learn more. Photo by Jeff Kubina/flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0 I would like to shove this paper in the face of the lecturer who told me my imaginary research on przewalski dna to study the relationship between them and domestic horses wouldn’t work. (it was part of a project on ZIMS where we had to fill an imaginary zoo with animals and come up with reasons to keep particular species.)Also, that’s kind of heartbreaking for the przewalskis, as the only reason zoos managed to get funding to reintroduce them was because they were considered the last wild horses… I bet that funding dries up now. -- source link