Przewalski's Horse

Equus ferus przewalskii. Also Mongolian wild horse, Asian wild horse. Prague. Circa 1940.

This Przewalski’s horse is the pure-blooded offspring of a population from the Altai Mountains and a direct descendent of the 54 animals used to save the subspecies.

AND THEN THERE WERE 13
The Przewalski’s horse and modern horses are believed to belong to the same species – Equus ferus. Nonetheless, modern horses most probably did not descend from Mongolian wild horses. The lineage of the two subspecies probably divided as long ago as 120,000 to 240,000 years ago – long before our horse breeds were domesticated.
Saving the only true wild horse to survive to this day was a dramatic exercise: in about 1900 the number of Przewalski’s horses in their natural habitat, the barren steppes of Mongolia and China, started to decline rapidly. Between 1899 and 1904, 54 wild horses were therefore caught for breeding in zoos and reserves. Unfortunately these efforts were not very successful at first. Only thirteen pure-blooded Przewalski’s horses survived the long journey and the dramatic change in their circumstances. The entire current population is descended from these thirteen animals! In order to avoid in-breeding, some of the wild horses were later crossed with Mongolian domestic horses. The genotype of all current-day Przewalski’s horses is, therefore, influenced by Mongolian domestic horses. The prized specimen at the NHM on the other hand is a pure-blooded descendent of wild horses from the Altai Mountains in Mongolia.
It was not until the 1990s that breeding was so successful that several projects were launched to resettle Przewalski’s horses in their original habitat. Austria participated in these projects. In 1992, the first animals were flown to Mongolia and successful reintroduced to the wild starting in 1997. Today 2,000 Przewalski’s horses once again live in the wild.