• BossDj@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    There are very, very few wild horses, and they’re pretty much untamable. But there are TONS of feral horses with populations growing out of control and governments at a loss for what to do about it

        • DaBPunkt@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          The Przewalski’s horse is not the wild form of our horse. It’s a other sub species (a little bit like the zebra or the donkey) with (for example) another chromosome count. Another problem is that there are evidences that the modern Przewalski’s horse feraled from a domesticate form of the primal Przewalski’s horse (that was tamed by the Botai culture). A further problem is that the Przewalski’s horse was extincted in the wild for decades and only survived because of human breeding (so it was kind of tamed again).

    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      What’s the difference between a wild and a feral horse? Isn’t going feral just kinda like going back to being a wild animal?

      • Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Yes, but it comes from a domesticated genetic line. Imagine if a Pug or Chihuahua went feral. It wouldn’t exact be the same as the original wolf-like starting point.

        It’s the same with horses. After generations of being bred by humans for specific traits, they’re very different than the original wild population. They’re probably also easier to re-domesticate than wild horses.

        • lanolinoil@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          But… there were no horses in the Americas until colonization (sort of) – Is there still a difference between feral and wild in the new world?

          • BossDj@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            They are all feral by definition in the new world (although I’ve never read about your link before!)

            Legislative BS that requires public opinion often refers to them as wild (because it plays to romanticizing) or they are sometimes labeled wild just to categorize how they will be treated by land and animal controllers (so they are considered “natural” in some areas). Before like the 70s, they were treated as pests and killed, but people thought they were cool and pretty, so it had to stop.

            Arizona had always had a shitty time because the horse populations destroy the environment, but when parks people tried to thin or remove them, people complained because horses are pretty.