Endangered
Wild horse
Equus ferus
Wild horse is a mammal in the family Equidae (order Perissodactyla) — Equus ferus, recorded as Endangered.
Range and habitat
Wild horses were formerly widespread across the Old World during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene, occurring from Western Europe and North Africa (where remains are referred to as Equus algericus), to the far north of Siberia (where they are referred to as Equus lenensis) to East Asia. Even so, the genetic makeup and foundation bloodstock of those breeds is substantially derived from domesticated horses, so these breeds possess domesticated traits.
Habitat labels include grassland and forest.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Upon reaching adulthood, both male and female horses disperse to other herds to avoid inbreeding, with young adult males also forming bachelor groups when they are around 3 years of age. Since the extinction of the tarpan, attempts have been made to reconstruct its phenotype using domestic horses, resulting in horse breeds such as the Heck horse.
In crisis
Przewalski's horse had reached the brink of extinction, but was reintroduced successfully into the wild. The tarpan became extinct in the 19th century, but is theorized to have been present on the steppes of Eurasia at the time of domestication.
Wild horse is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Wild horse, Wikidata item Q27742. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
