There are more wild horses on Earth, according to a study

AFP

AFP

Thursday, 22-feb-2018 17:02

UPDATE
Thursday, 22-feb-2018 17:07

Look at this article

MIAMI | There are no more wild horses on Earth were announced Thursday, researchers, a discovery based on a new DNA analysis that re-draws the genealogical tree of the family of these equines.

It turned out that those that were thought to be the last of the horses in the wild of our planet – the Przewalski horses were actually domesticated animals that have escaped their owners, according to this study, published in the journal Science.

“It was a huge surprise,” said Sandra Olsen, co-author of the study and curator in the institute of biodiversity and of the natural history museum of the University of Kansas.

“This means that there are more wild horses on Earth –and it is this that is sad,” is she sorry.

The study is based on archaeological research carried out on two sites in the north of Kazakhstan, Botai and Krasnyi Yar, where scientists have discovered evidence for the domestication of the horse dating back over 5000 years.

The international researchers have sequenced the genomes of 20 horses of Botai, including the use of teeth and bone exhumed on the sites.

By comparing them to the genomes of already known horses of modern and old, scientists have discovered that the horses of Przewalski were descended, in reality horses of Botai, equidae, domesticated known the oldest.

An unexpected finding which means that the Przewalski horses were not wild in origin.

These revelations are “super interesting,” said to the AFP Beth Shapiro, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the university of California, Santa Cruz.

And Mrs. Shapiro, who was not involved in the study, add: “Replace the word “wild” with “natural”, is a change in semantics that could better reflect their historical evolution, but should not change their status. We should continue to protect the Przewalski horses as a population of wild horses “.

The horse Przewalski is a threatened species according to the international Union for the conservation of nature.

Discovery in the Nineteenth century in Mongolia by the explorer Russian Nikolai Przewalski, the species has suddenly experienced a strong popularity in Europe, to the point that the horses have been extensively captured for supply to zoos in the Old continent.

Several reintroduction programs have been put in place since the species was extinct in the wild in the 1960s.

This discovery leads to a new challenge, summarized in the communiqué of the French CNRS: “The origin of domesticated horses in modern must be sought elsewhere “.