普氏野马:关于地球上最后的“野马”你不知道的5件事

普氏野马:关于地球上最后的“野马”你不知道的5件事

We think of horses as domesticated animals, and no wonder since we've been breeding them for millennia for everything from hunting and jumping to herding and ranch work to pulling plows and heavy carts. Over the centuries, some horses have gone feral, like the famous American mustang, the Camargue horses of France, and the brumbies of Australia. We call them wild, but technically they're not. However, unlike the equids we're used to seeing on farms or roaming over hillsides, the Przewalksi's horse was believed to be a truly wild horse breed, having never been domesticated by humans.

我们认为马是驯养的动物，这也难怪，因为我们几千年来一直饲养它们，从狩猎、跳跃到放牧、牧场劳作，再到拉犁和拉大车。几个世纪以来，一些马变得野性化了，比如著名的美国野马、法国的卡马格马和澳大利亚的野马。我们称它们为野生动物，但严格来说它们不是。然而，与我们在农场或山坡上看到的马科动物不同的是，普氏野马被认为是一种真正的野马品种，从未被人类驯化过。

The Przewalski horse is an endangered subspecies of the wild horse and is named after the Russian explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky. (Photo: Patrick Pleul//AFP/Getty Images)

If not truly wild, the Przewalski's horse, native to the steppes of central Asia, is endangered. Here are 5 cool facts about these special horses and what's being done to protect them.

普氏野马原产于中亚大草原，如果不是真正的野生马，它也有灭绝的危险。以下是关于这些特殊的马的5个有趣的事实，以及如何保护它们。

1. The Przewalski's horse is a subspecies of Equus ferus and is considered the closest relative of the domestic horse. It is cousin to zebras and the wild ass, which all fall under the Equidae family. The split between Przewalski's horse species and the ancestors of domestic horses happened somewhere between 120,000 and 240,000 years ago.

普氏野马是马的亚种，被认为是家马的近亲。它是斑马和野驴的表亲，它们都属于马科。普氏马和驯养马的祖先之间的分裂发生在12万到24万年前。

2. Przewalski’s horses are named after Col. Nikolai Przewalski, who was the first Western scientist to describe the species in writing in 1878. However, the first sighting by a European occurred centuries earlier, when Johann Schiltberger recorded his sighting in the early 1400s during a trip to Mongolia while a prisoner of the Turks.

普氏野马是以尼古拉·普洗瓦尔斯基上校(Col. Nikolai Przewalski)的名字命名的，他是第一位在1878年写下这个物种的西方科学家。然而，欧洲人的第一次目击发生在几个世纪前，当约翰·斯基尔特伯格在15世纪初被土耳其俘虏去蒙古旅行时，他记录了自己的第一次目击。

3. The Przewalski's horse nearly disappeared into extinction. Very few in captivity made it through World War II and the last wild individual was spotted in 1969. The species was listed as extinct from the wild in the 1960s until the 1990s, when one surviving individual was found in the wild and other bands of captive-bred horses were reintroduced with continuing success. Currently, there are about 400 horses living in the wild and around 2,000 individuals in captive breeding programs and zoos, and the species' status is now listed as endangered.

普氏野马几乎灭绝了。在第二次世界大战期间，被圈养的动物很少能存活下来，最后一只野生个体是在1969年被发现的。从20世纪60年代到90年代，这个物种被列为从野外灭绝的物种，当时在野外发现了一个幸存的个体，其他圈养繁殖的马被重新引入，并取得了持续的成功。目前，约有400匹马生活在野外，约有2000匹马在圈养繁殖项目和动物园里，这个物种的状态现在被列为濒危物种。

A 12-year-old mare named Ieda with her new foal are in the pasture at the Highland Wildlife Park in 2013 in Kingussie, Scotland. The foal was the first newborn Przewalski's horse at the park in five years. (Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

4. All the Przewalski's horses alive today are descended from 12 horses — 11 captured and brought out of Mongolia around 1900, and a female captured in 1947. Captive breeding has increased the species' numbers from a low of about 30 individuals to today's count approaching 2,000 individuals. The first pedigree book was created by zoologist Dr. Erna Mohr, and a detailed studbook has been kept and updated ever since to minimize inbreeding and thus maximize genetic diversity.

所有现存的普氏野马都是12匹马的后代，其中11匹是1900年左右从蒙古捕获并运出的，另外1匹是1947年捕获的母马。圈养繁殖使该物种的数量从30只左右增加到今天的近2000只。第一本家谱是由动物学家埃尔纳·莫尔博士(Dr. Erna Mohr)创建的，从那以后，一份详细的血统簿一直被保存和更新，以最大限度地减少近亲繁殖，从而最大限度地增加遗传多样性。

5. Despite the careful captive breeding programs, a major threat to the species today is a loss of genetic diversity and thus disease. Their original decline was brought about by hunting, loss of water resources to domestic animals, and loss of habitat. Hybridization with domestic horses was (and is) a threat.

尽管有精心的圈养繁殖计划，但今天对物种的一个主要威胁还是遗传多样性的丧失和疾病。它们最初的衰落是由于狩猎、家畜失去了水资源和栖息地。与驯养的马杂交过去是(现在也是)一种威胁。

A herd of Przewalksi's horses graze in summer. (Photo: Vlasto Opatovsky/Shutterstock)