We got up this morning and went out of to search for wolves. The park ranger who took us said he thinks there are two packs of 5 or 6 wolves each. We searched multiple places, but we failed. No wolves were seen on this trip. We did see another herd of Takhi, though. This time, Sunny, the biologist who specializes in the Takhi (or Przewalski Horse) was with us, so we got lots of questions answered.
When I was a teenager, I was on the 4-H Horse Club's horse bowl team. That's a team that competes in competitions with other clubs on horse-related trivia. One of the things we learned on that team is that the Przewalski Horse was the bridge between the "hippus" animals and the "equus" animals we now know as horses. This is not true. It very well may be what science thought at the time, but genome mapping and other things were not known waaay back then. As science learns more, things we thought sometimes change, too. I'm getting ready to geek out on you, so consider yourself warned! We now know that both the modern horse and Przewalski's horse evolved from early equus. However, Przewalski's horse (known as Takhi in Mongolian) is the only remaining truly wild horse in the world, making it its own species in the equus genus - just like the zebra is its own equus species. Once the horse was domesticated, breeding was controlled, which kept its chromosomal makeup stable with 66 chromosomes. This is the case whether this domesticated horse has ever been tamed or not, so it includes those wild ponies on Chincoteaque Island and the wild mustangs in the western US. It also includes all the untamed livestock horses in Mongolia and other countries where horse meat is eaten. This is because those untamed horses have descended from horses that were previously domesticated so that the chromosomal makeup has been stable at 66 without the massive amount of years required for a Robertsonian translocation
The Takhi, on the other hand, continued evolving naturally and eventually underwent a common Robertsonian translocation (a fusing of some chromosomes) so that it now only has 64 chromosomes, even though the 14 Takhi that remained in the world were in zoos. This is why the Taklhi looks more similar to the cave drawings of horses than the domestic horse does.
Cave painting in Lascaux Cave in Dordogne, France (dated Paleolithic) (Credit World History Encyclopedia)
The last confirmed sighting of a Takhi in the wild prior to reintroduction was in 1969. At that time, there were 14 individuals in various zoos around the world. To prevent extinction, some of those zoos started an intensive breeding program. Beginning in the 1990s, they began reintroducing the Przewalski horse to various places in the wild, including in three locations in Mongolia. One of those locations is Khoman Tal National Park in Mongolia. In 2003, they fenced in 14,000 hectares of the Khomen Tal steppe to protect it from overgrazing and to ensure there was water from the Zavkhan River. Then 22 zoo-born horses were transported from France. Because of the success of this reintroduction, Khoman Tal National Park was recognized in 2020, and expanded to 411,403 hectares, with the original 14,000 hectares remaining fenced. The expansion of the protected area by designation as a national park has also helped the populations of the Saiga antelope, the Mongolian gazelle, and other animals of the western steppe. Estimates are that for the three locations with the Takhi reintroduction in Mongolia, there are approximately 900 Takhi in the country, with approximately 150 of them in Khoman Tal National Park.
Anyway, we saw lots of Takhi and we had Sunny, the Takhi biologist, with us! (Sunny's name in Mongolian means sunny, so that's the name she goes by in English.) She explained to us that the Takhi are all the same color. The color variations we were seeing during our visit was the result of them being in various stages of shedding their winter coats. She also told us that in 2014, anthrax invaded the park. They took steps to control the spread, by testing, quarantine, and treatment. When a horse passed, they buried it and fenced the area around it for further quarantine. With all of these steps, they were able to limit the loss to only five horses, which I think is amazing! We also asked about potential hybridization. Though the Takhi and domestic horses can breed and have viable offspring, Sunny said their experience has been that the offspring have not survived the few times it has happened in their herds.
Following breakfast, we went searching for owls. There's only one place in the park to find owls, so we didn't have to search a whole lot. We drove down to the river and saw some whooper swans chilling out in the cold water. They flew away before I could get a decent shot. I usually say a bad shot is better than no shot, but these were even too bad to qualify for that. We found nests for
the eagle owl (who didn't move)
We came back to the lodge for lunch and some information about the park and the reintroduction program, including the challenges the park is facing with reintroduction, including plans to remove the fence and let the Takhi roam throughout and the other animals in the park graze in what is currently the protected area. Then we went out for more Takhi. I'll never get my fill of these lovely and unique horses. I've been wanting to see them since the late 1970s, when I learned about them, and now that I have, I can't seem to get my fill. I won't bore you with aaaallllll of the shots I took while we were at the park. But I will give you a few of the more unique ones. They have a stallion in the park who has lost his herd and is cast out. For some reason, he has not decided to join a bachelor herd and wanders alone. Maybe the bachelor herd won't accept him because he has become disfigured. His name is NoTail because he has lost his tail, potentially in the fight when he lost his herd. Being alone makes him vulnerable to wolf or other predator attacks, but he has survived thus far.
The Takhi are also matriarchal even though a herd only has one stallion. It is the lead mare who tells everybody what to do. The male is only there for mating. In this herd, The matriarch was putting many of the others in their places. I missed the best one, but I did catch a smaller discipline. I'm not sure what the other mare was doing wrong, but she was having none of it!
After a very productive day, we headed back to the lodge, getting ready to move again in the morning for more adventures! Again, Soaring Expeditions knocked it out of the park, delivering more than I was hoping for!
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