Talk:Przewalski's horse

Why feral, not wild?

Can anyone explain why the authors of the 2018 Science article could conclude that the Przewalski horse has Botai ancestors... as opposed to merely being related? In my simplistic understanding, I would imagine that there is merely a certain amount of identical & of different genetic sequences... that possibly there are differences among regularly mutating sequences (e.g., mitochondria?), so it would be possible to decide at what time two groups split / when two groups last interbred... ... ... but then how can the authors conclude, that indidividual X (or: group X = studied Botai horses) is an ancestor of individual Y (Przewalski horse)? ... let alone, conclude that X was domestic when procreating? [Possible alternative explanations: X is offspring of the wild horses Z, and Z are also the ancestors of Y... or X was born wild, procreated (producing a filly or fillies A), and was later domesticated... while A became the ancestors of Y?]

I'm sure the authors thought this through, and I would love to understand at least marginally how their genetic data led to their conclusions! Thanks for any attempts at an explanation! --Ibn Battuta (talk) 17:43, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

It’s more that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” The Botai clearly captured, tamed, and held horses of Przewalski ancestry in an isolated instance of possible domestication. But the two questions are a) does this constitute “domestication of the horse”? and b) does this render all Przewalski horses “domesticated?” In other words, all extant members of e.ferus caballus do trace to previously domesticated horses, but this does not appear to be true of the Przewalski population. Or if it is, we need more studies that replicate the findings of this one. So we are, basically, watching the science before making major changes. Montanabw^(talk) 18:15, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

The core argument is based on a genetic tree. If you map out the genetics of all of the archaeological specimens, they will form a tree, a hypothetical branching pattern that produced the observed diversity. Likewise, if you map out 'wild' specimens they will produce a tree. If you combine these two trees, in the most parsimonious (and simplistic) model you will see one of two things. If the Botai horses were the product of domesticating a wild Przewalski horse, then the entire tree of the Botai horses will appear to be a single branch among the Przewalski horse tree. However, if the Przewalski are feral Botai domestic horses, then the Przewalski will represent one branch within the Botai horses:

wild horses are feral

domestic horses from wild

Przew1

Botai3

Botai4

Przew2

Botai1

Botai2

Przew3

Przew1

Botai1

Przew2

Przew3

Botai2

Botai3

What they observed was that the Przewalski's horses nested within the Botai tree, thereby suggesting that they are a feral population. The problem with this analysis is that the severely restricted modern Przewalski population will have a distorting effect on the genetic analysis - if the Botai tree derives from independent captives of a diverse wild population, the highly inbred modern population will look like it nests within the Botai tree, even though the Botai and modern samples are all representing the original diverse Przewalski population, lost in the modern population because of the wild population's genetic bottleneck. Agricolae (talk) 19:20, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. So how do they determine which population nests in which one? (From the way you explain it, it sounds a bit like genetic variance. But then again, how could they determine variance given they studied the genetical make-up of just one Przewalski horse? Wouldn't they need at the very least two? Or what did they use?) Thanks in advance, Ibn Battuta (talk) 09:01, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean. With only one Przewalski, it is either more similar to some Botai than either that Przewalski and that Botai are to the other Borai, as opposed to all Botai clustering together as sister group of the Przewalski. In terms of how they actually do it, they sequence the DNA, compile a 'complete' genome for each, then plug the sequences into an algorithm that predicts branching patterns based on single nucleotide polymorphisms and INDELs, taking two and asking to which a third sequence is closer based on the variation among sequences, then they (or, rather, the algorithm) progressively add each subsequent sequence and ask the same question (and because order of addition and quirks of the analysis has been shown to have an effect, they usually repeat the analysis independently numerous times with every possible order of addition, hundreds or even thousands of times in total, and produce an 'average' tree of those variants most commonly arrived at, or simply present the most common ones as alternatives). Agricolae (talk) 11:47, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

wild horses are feral

domestic horses from wild

Botai2

Botai3

Przew1

Botai1

Przew1

Botai1

Botai2

Botai3

Another thing that jumped out at me as an error in the study is that they didn’t consider the question of whether the attempted domestication of Przewalski horses was a failed experiment. The reason they are deemed wild today is because they simply won’t domesticate— it hasn’t been for lack of trying.Montanabw^(talk) 07:24, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

If the Przewalski's horse is a feral animal should it be classified as a domestic horse or just a endangered horse? Dennis the mennis (talk) 12:43, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Not clear what you are asking. If you mean whether its status as (potentially) once-feral changes its taxonomic placement, it does not. That is based on genetics, physical characteristics and natural history. (For example, whether it was once domesticated does not change the fact that it has a different number of chromosomes.) If you are talking about referring to it as a 'domestic' as a simple description of something once domesticated, such a usage is bound to give rise to confusion, since the term 'domestic horse' is broadly used specifically refer to the other species/subspecies of equid when there is a need to distinguish it from this type of 'horse' - this is one reason there is a growing sentiment in some of the Prze research community not to refer to it as a 'horse' at all, and instead to use the Mongolian term 'takhi', while restricting the use of 'horse' to the other group (analogous to the change from using 'pigmy chimpanzee' to refer to the other species of great ape, to using the unambiguous 'bonobo' for one and 'chimpanzee' only for the other). Then something like 'domestic' reverts to its moore natural role as a simple adjective, rather than a (sub)species designator. Agricolae (talk) 13:47, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I think the Przewalski's horse shouldn't be assessed for the IUCN Red List as it is now regarded as a feral descendant of early domestic horses. Dennis the mennis (talk) 12:21, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

The entire argument, however, is contingent on the Botai horses being truly domestic, i.e. selectively bred over many generations for neotony, docility, etc. as opposed to just wild animals kept in pens, as is the case for cassowaries, Asian elephants, fallow deer, etc. Until we can demonstrate that Botai horses were more than that, I think Przewalski's horses should be considered wild animals. Certainly, there are behavioural differences between them and typical domestic horses that should be taken into account. At least one paper has challenged the feral theory but unfortunately, it is only available in Russian (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327695401_Przewalski's_Horse_the_Wild_Species_or_Feral_Horse). Some of these concerns have also bee expressed in a formal response to the original paper (https://repository.si.edu/handle/10088/55401) (talk) 12:40, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

With all due respect I would have to disagree that Przewalski's horses should be treated as wild animals. Wild horses no longer exist and the only truly wild equids that still exist are zebras and asses (talk) 20:09, 31 April 2021 (UTC)

That really isn't known concretely though. The feral conclusion may quite possibly have been premature, for the reasons I listed above. It seems that until their assumptions can be confirmed and concerns from other researchers addressed, we should be allowing for both possibilities. Even if the Botai horses were shown to have been truly domesticated, which they have not, I believe that it would be a mistake to revoke IUCN status from Przewalski's horses, as they were living as wild animals for millennia, retained behavioural traits associated with wild animals, possess a unique wildtype phenotype, distinct genetics, and are an important trophic element of Eurasian steppe ecosystems that should be conserved and returned (talk) 7:46, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

New Paper suggests that the Botai horses were never domesticated, which would make the entire premise of the feral theory questionable at best: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350581960_Rethinking_the_evidence_for_early_horse_domestication_at_Botai (talk) 17:07, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Reordering

I have just done a major rearrangement of material. Over the past year or so the page has evolved in a manner that produced split discussions of some topics, notably captivity and conservationreintroduction, across three different sections, the Chernobyl population twice, etc, and in some cases the sections had contradictory information. I have combined and reassorted the History, Population, and Conservation efforts sections, retaining almost all of the text, but consolidating text about the same topic together. I am not wed to this particular arrangement - if anyone has a better alternative I would welcome it, but recent edits were both exacerbating and highlighting the problem of redundancy and split discussion, and I decided to be bold. Agricolae (talk) 23:42, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the cleanup. It needed to be done. SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:56, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

One thing I didn't do that someone with a better eye for these things can - redistribute the images. Agricolae (talk) 23:34, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Przewalski not historically in Europe

The lede sentence about their historical range being in Central Asia is entirely accurate, while nothing in the article (what the lede is supposed to summarize) provides any indication of their historical presence there. The citation given for the change is for their current reintroduced range, and makes no claim to their historical range. If we are going to claim they were originally in Europe, there needs to be some actual verifiable basis for it. Agricolae (talk) 17:02, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Is the IUCN saying they were in Ukraine, but were extirpated there not evidence enough? Ddum5347 (talk) 17:13, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

No, because it doesn't match their own historical description, which makes no mention of Ukraine. They do cite a source that suggests all wild horses in Asia and Europe were Przewalski's but then immediately contradict this, suggesting that those in Europe were tarpans (the paper they cite also predates paleogenomics, which has not reported any link between European specimens and Przewalski's). Anytime a source is internally-inconsistent, we look for a second source, yet all of the other recent sources I have seen make no reference to them being that far west in the historical record. Do you have one? Agricolae (talk) 18:15, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes. Ryder, O.A., 1990, Putting the wild horse back into the wild, Przewalski's Horse Global Conservation Plan, , Zoological Society of San Diego, Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species, San Diego, from this article: [1] Ddum5347 (talk) 18:36, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

This is nothing but an older version of the same IUCN text, with the exact same sentence citing the exact same dated source already mentioned, only without the qualification later added that the European ones may well instead have been tarpans. Agricolae (talk) 18:59, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Considering that the IUCN assessment is for the species as a whole, that range may have been indeed been tarpans. However, I still think this counts, since the Przewalski's horse is the last wild representative of the species. Ddum5347 (talk) 18:47, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Przewalski historically in Mongolia?

Following Agricolae above, but considering the opposite end of the Przewalski's range, I note that this page's lede also declares that the horse has been "reintroduced to its native habitat" in several areas of Mongolia, although that nation, by definition not overlapping any part of Central Asia, cannot then be part of that historical range.

By "habitat," does the text merely refer to the kind of wild environment the horse primevally occupied (one found also in North America)? I doubt it. If not, then the lede ought to be modified to read "originally native to the steppes of Central and East Asia," with an internal link to each place, so naming both but giving Central Asia precedence for its (presumably) greater standing in the Przewalski's history. Mucketymuck (talk) 05:25, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Discuss/Dispute regarding the use of the word 'hypodermis'

I believe that in the last sentence before going on to reproduction, the term hypodermis should be replaced with 'hypometabolism'.. From the 2006 article by Walter Arnold, Thomas Ruf, and Regina Kuntzbelow: The study presents findings in which the researchers concluded that Przewalski's horse exhibited signs of seasonal adjustment due not to energy intake but to endogenous control. A comparison study in 2012 of Shetland ponies by Lea Brinkmann, Martina Gerken, Alexander Riek is found here:

2601:247:C204:DF80:DB9:2A24:A9DD:43E (talk) 02:49, 5 January 2022 (UTC)Cherie D. Lyon

I concur this is what was intended, but the authors never actually use the term to describe the phenomenon they are observing (only in reference to nocternal hypometabolism) so it is probably best avoided entirely - described rather than identified with a fancy word not used by the source. Agricolae (talk) 13:01, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

References