In caves near Lascaux, France there are many pictures painted on the walls. There are hundreds of pictures of deer, horses, cattle, bison, and lions. It’s believed that ancient people made these pictures.

The caves horses don’t look exactly like today domestic horses. But they do look very much like Przewalski’s horses.

Przewalski’s horses were first written about 1,000 years ago. A monk from Tibet wrote about them. A Mongolian wrote how a herd of wild horses ran in front of a famous Mongolian emperor Genghis Khan. The wild horses frightened the emperor’s horses.

 
Przewalski’s horses are also called Asian wild horse. They once lived across most of Europe and Asia. Today there are only 1,300 Przewalski’s horses left. Only a few still live in their homeland. The rest live in zoos or wildlife parks.

Przewalski’s horses aren’t the same as domestic horses. Domestic horses have been raised, tamed, and used by humans for thousands of years.

 

Przewalski’s horses don’t act or look like domestic horses. All domestic horses even mustangs enjoy human attention. But Przewalski’s horses never learn to love people. They can be tame, but they are difficult to train. They can be mean to the people who take care of them.

 
All Przewalski’s horses are the same color. They are tan. Their head and neck are darker then the rest of their body. The under part of there is light cream. The lower part is white. The legs, mane, and tail are dark brown or black. Their legs have stripes like a zebra’s. A dark stripe runs along their backbone. Some domestic horses have a stripe runs down their back.
The hair at the top of the horse’s tail is much shorter than other horses. The longer hairs start farther down on the tail. Przewalski’s horses grow a new mane and tail every year.

Przewalski’s horses are smaller then riding horses. Adult males stand 54-58 inches tall. Females stand 48-55 inches tall. A full-grown horse weighs 550-850 pounds.

 

Their head is larger then their body. Their eyes are set closer together and up higher.

 
They always lived on the steppe. This is large grassland in the Eastern Hemisphere. The steppe stretches for thousand of miles. Few trees grow on the steppes is the best place for hoofed animals to live.

People living on the steppe began raising their livestock. They had the best grass and water. So the wild animals had to move to the mountains and deserts areas. That made the herds smaller.

 

Two German scientists planned the first capture of the Przewalski. Their names were D.A Clemenz and C.E Buchner. They teamed up with Nikolai Assanov. Assanov was a Russian who lived in Mongolia. They made a plan but didn’t have enough money to carry it out.  Assanov hired hunters to help with the capture. Nobody thought they could take a full group of Przewalski’s alive. The adults are too fast and to afraid of humans. They could only catch the young horses and foals.

 
The plan had to carry out in the spring when the foals were still small. The hunters started out in spring on 1897. It was a long time before they found the herds. They had to us their fastest horses to keep up with the herds. The plan was to separate the foals from their mothers. The scared foals would get tired. Then the hunters would catch them with ropes.
The first year they caught a few foals. But all of them died. The next spring they caught six  foals. They lived longer on sheep's milk but in a few months then they died. Finally someone had  the  idea to have domestic mares to feed the foals. There were six females and one male. The mare's milk kept them alive. But the male and one female were too weak to travel. They were left at Assanov's home.

The only females had to walk 3,000 miles to the nearest train station. There they traveled 3,000 miles by train to reach their new home. The next spring they arrived at their new home safe.

By 1901 the hunters became better at catching the foals. They caught more than 50 live foals. But only 28 survived the long trip. Twelve went to private animal rescues in  England. The rest were split up in to males and females. They went to zoos in England, Germany, France, Holland, and the United States.
By 1940, the Przewalski was very rare. Only a few small group were spotted. In 1966 the last Przewalsk was spotted  in the wild. Without the foals in the zoos the Prewalski's horse would be extinct.

Endangered animals slowly died out because of lost habitat. When their habitat changes a lot the animals start to have problems. The captured horses kept the breed alive. The best way to save an endangered animal is to restore their habitat. It 's not save to release all endangered animals at the same time. There could be bad weather or a natural disaster that would kill them all at the same time.

In 1986, the first horses were released back into the wild but they were still fenced in but they had more acres to roam. The first time the Przewalski went into the wild they needed help. For a year or two they lived in a small fenced in yard. SO the people know that they could find food and water. They were protected from hunters and wolves.

Przewalsk's horses live in organized groups with one stallion and several mares and their foals.

In June 1994, two herd went into the reserve. They lived completely wild. People only checked on them once in a while. Today there are zoo horses living in the wild.

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