Wild and Feral Horses: Studies, Pictorial and Information

[Balam]

Wild horses and donkeys dig desert wells that boost biodiversity

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Feral horses and donkeys in the Sonoran desert in North America dig their own wells, inadvertently providing a water source for other animals and increasing biodiversity in the area.

Erick Lundgren at Aarhus University in Denmark and his colleagues monitored four separate streams in part of the Sonoran desert in Arizona. The streams are usually supplied by groundwater but dry up in the summer. The team surveyed each stream every few weeks over the summers of 2015, 2016 and 2018, and found that horses and donkeys in the area dig wells there to access the groundwater.

“It’s a very hot, dry desert and you’ll get these pretty magical spots where suddenly there is surface water,” says Lundgren.

The horses and donkeys dig wells up to 2 metres in depth to access water. The team saw 59 other vertebrate species at the wells, 57 of which were recorded drinking from the wells. On average, species richness was 51 per cent higher at these wells than observed in nearby dry areas during the same time periods.

“These resources are in fact used by all other animals – there was a cacophony of organisms,” says Lundgren. This included squirrels, mule deer, quails and even a black bear at one point, he says.

The wells also function as germination points for plants, especially riparian pioneer trees. These horses and donkeys provide a useful source of water for a range of species, which is especially important given that deserts are becoming hotter and drier as a result of climate change.

Despite this find, large herbivores are often seen as threats to conservation and biodiversity. “Some research from the western United States has shown that feral horses exclude native wildlife from water sources in deserts,” says Lucas Hall at California State University, Bakersfield. “The benefit they may provide by creating new water sources will likely be offset by their high populations and exclusionary effects on other wildlife.” Reply

[Sully]

Origin of domestic horses finally established

The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes

Abstract

Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare1. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling2,3,4 at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 BC3. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia5 and Anatolia6, have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Furthermore, we map the population changes accompanying domestication from 273 ancient horse genomes. This reveals that modern domestic horses ultimately replaced almost all other local populations as they expanded rapidly across Eurasia from about 2000 BC, synchronously with equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled chariots. We find that equestrianism involved strong selection for critical locomotor and behavioural adaptations at the GSDMC and ZFPM1 genes. Our results reject the commonly held association7 between horseback riding and the massive expansion of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists into Europe around 3000 BC8,9 driving the spread of Indo-European languages10. This contrasts with the scenario in Asia where Indo-Iranian languages, chariots and horses spread together, following the early second millennium BC Sintashta culture11,12. Reply