zenosanalytic reblogged
The holy animal of Mongolia is big-headed and stocky, like a pudgy foal that overgrew in odd places. Its body is the color of a stirred cappuccino, but the legs are dark, as if dressed in stockings. Its muzzle is white, its mane black and bristly, erect as a fresh-cut mohawk. A matching line runs like a racing stripe all the way down the horse’s back. The babies are often pale gray, and woolly like lambs, and while any sensible human would immediately want to pet one, if not outright hug it, wolves see lunch.
If you were able to observe this creature in person, which is hard to do, given that they live in only a few places on earth, you would find it in a family network—a harem—with a dominant stallion watching over mares and their offspring, in groups of 5 to 15. For this to happen, you would have to be in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, China or Russia, the only places the horse lives anymore in the wild. Not so long ago, the species, once prolific on the Central Asia steppe, was one cruel winter, one hungry wolf pack, one outbreak of disease away from extinction.
This animal is generally known as “Przewalski’s horse” (pronounced shuh-VAL-skee), or “P-horse,” for short, but Mongolians call it takhi, which means spirit, or worthy of worship. You don’t ride the takhi, or stable it, or—pony-like as the horse appears—saddle it up and perch children on it at birthday parties. The horse is too wild for that. While it has been captured and occasionally confined to zoos, it has never been tamed—it is the only truly wild horse in existence. Other horses that are thought of as wild are in fact feral…