Feral horses

Horses (Equus caballus / Equus ferus caballus) are found living a wild way of life in many parts of the world with little human intervention, or none at all. There is little discussion between scientists as to the domestic origin of most of these free ranging horse populations, although some do defend theories of non-domestic origin.

For those that consider that all extant wild living populations of horses indeed descended from domestic horses, the term used to describe them is “Feral” and below some examples of its scientific usage:

“The majority of the apparently wild populations around the world are in fact feral. That is they are domestic animals which have returned to the wild” Kiley-Worthington (1987)

“Feral horses are those whose ancestors or who themselves were domestic stock, but have been free running for some time” McDonnell (1999)

“A number of other populations of free-ranging horses or ponies like these at Assateague are found throughout the world. Some live on Islands while others rom over inland regions. Some populations have been studies by scientists, others remain unstudied. All these populations consist of feral animals, animals that have been domesticated but have since returned to the wild. There are no groups that have never been domesticated, and thus there are no truly wild horses in existence.” Keiper (1985)

“Historically, romantic names such as Mustang and Cayuse in North America, Brumby in Australia, and Cimarron, Begual, or Monstreco in South America were applied to free ranging horses. Today’s horses regardless of nomenclature are feral animals whose ancestors were once domesticated.” Berger (1986)

The word feral has its origins in the Latin fera, or wild animal, or ferus which is simply translated as wild. Funnily enough, fairly recent (2003) adjustments to taxonomical nomenclature of horses have made space for the extinct wild ancestor of Equus caballus, the domestic horse. These previously unclassified ancestors were named Equus ferus and proponents of this line of thinking suggest that the nomenclature of domestic horses should thus be: Equus ferus caballus.

A site on horses: http://wildequus.org/

Posted on September 10, 2014 08:25 PM by vicros