text x_quick_Title2=Class: Mammalia~Order: Perissodactyla~Family: Equidae (Equus caballus przewalskii)
text x_quick=Where In the World~` There may be no more Przewalski's horses left in the wild. There are between 600 and 1,000 captive horses in zoos and protected reserves.~` Long ago, the Przewalski's horse ranged across the steppes and deserts of far eastern Asia.~` Before they became extinct in the wild, Przewalski's horse was found in southwestern Mongolia and nearby parts of China.~\
~Take a Look!~` Przewalski's horse is between seven and nine feet long, plus a long, flowing tail that's about three feet long. ~` They stand from four to almost five feet tall at the shoulder (about 12 to 14 hands).~` The Przewalski's horse weighs between 450 and 650 pounds.~` The horses are small but dense, with a brushy, stand-up mane and a large head. They are dun or light bay in colour (a reddish-tan colour) with a dark brown stripe that runs down the back. Their legs are black.~ ~All in the Family~` Przewalski's horse is related to the domestic horse. Two close relatives, the wild forest horse of western Europe and the plains tarpon of southern Russia, are both extinct.~ ~Just the Facts~` Przewalski's horses like to live in groups. Every now and then, one horse will wander alone for a while, but will eventually join or form a group.~` Like all horses, Przewalski's horses graze on grasses and coarse shrubs. Sometimes they dig for plant bulbs with their hooves.~` Mares rarely have twins. She is pregnant for almost a year, and her offspring are usually born between April and June. The foals weigh between 50 and 65 pounds at birth.~` If there's enough food and room for the herd to grow, a mare will have a foal each year. As she's pregnant for almost a year, that means she spends most of her adult life being pregnant. ~` The oldest known Przewalski's horse was 34 years old.
;Habitat
text x_hab= Przewalski's horse lived in eastern Asia, in deserts and a special habitat called a steppe - huge areas of level, grassy land with scattered trees. They once lived in Kazakhstan, Sinkiang (or Xinjiang) in China, and Mongolia. There's a perfectly enormous lake in Siberia, called Lake Baikal, and the horses may have lived up to there, as well. These lands provided the three things the horses need - grass and plants to eat, water to drink, and plenty of room. ~\
Przewalski's horses spent their days snoozing in whatever shade they could find in desert areas, where enemies would have a hard time sneaking up unnoticed. At sunset, the herds woke up and travelled back to the grasslands to graze and drink. In the summer, the horse's coat is short and sleek. But in winter, the horse grows a thick, fuzzy coat to stay warm, with so much fuzz around its face that it seems to be wearing a beard. Horses don't mind travelling, so when winters were too severe in one place, the herd would migrate to~a warmer area. The same thing happened when one area didn't get enough rain and there was no grass to graze - off they went, in search of greener steppes. ~\
Despite all this travel, individual groups generally stayed within a territory when they didn't need to migrate. Being sociable, the horses don't really mind if some other herd shares the same territory, as long as the stallions don't try to steal each other's mares. The only time they fight is to defend the immediate space they're standing on, or when they're protecting scarce resources - like a small watering hole during a drought.
;Food
text x_eat= Like all horses, Przewalski's horse is a grazing animal. It eats a variety of grasses and coarse shrubs. Sometimes, it digs with its hooves to find the tasty bulbs of plants. The availability of food and water varies by season - during the hottest, driest months, there may be little grass and even less water. The horse, known for its remarkable stamina, may travel for many miles to find a more hospitable region. ~\
Horses have chisel-shaped "ripping" teeth to pull out grasses and low foraging plants, and "grinding" teeth to crush the grasses. The teeth are permanent, so you can "read" a horse's age by seeing how worn down his grinding teeth are. In places where the grass is very coarse, the teeth will wear down faster, so to tell a horse's age accurately by teeth, you have to know what kind of grass it usually eats.
;Habits and Characteristics
text x_life= Thousands of years ago, horses and humans lived side by side and pretty much ignored each other. Then some clever human figured out how to tame a horse. Scientists think it's likely that the first horses to be tamed were in southern Russia. (The horses were called plains tarpons, and they're extinct today.) The people of southern Russia were nomads who travelled from place to place. Once the horses were tamed, the nomads used the horses to carry all their possessions. (Eventually, one brave nomad decided that he (or she) should try to ride a horse - the rest is history. Humans have had a love affair with horses ever since.) ~\
So that's probably how horses became tame. In some places - like the American west - tame horses escaped captivity and became wild again. That's called being feral. To be very precise, the wild mustangs in the west aren't really wild at all - they're feral because they're descended from tamed horses. So all the horses in the world today are either tame or feral... ~\
...except for just one special kind of horse - Przewalski's horse, which is the last truly wild horse on Earth. This small, heavy horse lives in a part of the world which many humans stayed away from for a long time - the huge plains and deserts of eastern Asia. Local people knew about the wild horses, but the locals usually had all the tame horses they needed - who wants to tame a wild horse when there's a nice, gentle, tame horse for sale down the road? So, like they did thousands of years ago, humans and wild horses lived side by side without bothering each other. ~\
The rest of the world didn't even know there were any wild horses left anywhere until 1879, when a Russian explorer named Nicolai Przewalski came to see what was going on in the huge grasslands to the east of the "civilised" world. (Guess who gave those horses their long name!? By the way, it's pronounced "Prez-VAHL-skee.") An animal collector named Carl Hagenbeck took 34 of the horses to Hamburg, Germany. As odd as it is to take an animal out of its natural habitat and away from its family, we should thank Herr Hagenbeck, because all of the Przewalski's horses alive in the world today are descended from those Hagenbeck horses. ~\
Przewalski's horse is a sociable animal, and likes to live in groups. The most important kind of group is a family. One stallion gathers two or three mares into his own herd, and they live with their new foals and yearlings. When the foals are two or three years old, they generally leave the group. Often, these young horses form herds of their own. As they get older, the strongest stallions form their own harems, while the less dominant stallions often form bachelor herds. Every now and then, a horse will wander alone. If it's a mare, she will probably join a stallion's group eventually. A Przewalski's stallion is pretty tolerant of other males - he seems to remember and like his own children, and sometimes younger or weaker males are allowed to join his group, as long as the lesser stallion remembers who the boss is! The mares have a leader, too, and she keeps all the other mares in line.
;Threats
text x_threat= Once, the steppes where Przewalski's horse lived were isolated - very few people lived there. But in the late 1800s, people discovered that the grasses the horses were so fond of would also be good for sheep and cattle. Soon, the horses were pushed further and further out of Siberia and Kazakhstan. Their grasses went to domestic livestock, as did their water supplies. Local peoples had long hunted the horses for food - as their habitat began to decline, the horses were less able to recover from being hunted. ~\
