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蒙古呼斯台国家公园（Hustai National Park）中的普氏野马 @Zazaa Mongolia, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
提到野马，你或许会想到欢快地驰骋在山野间的马儿，或者是肌肉车福特野马……但实际上真正的野马相当罕见。在最近疯传的一些短视频中出现了一匹颜色异乎寻常的“马”，或者，更准确地说，是一匹完全是另一个物种的马——普氏野马（Equus ferus przewalskii）。关于这种马的名字有许多不同的说法，它的英文拼写是“Przewalski”，发音是 shuh-val-ski 或 pshuh-val-ski。这是西方科学界根据一位在中亚草原“发现”它们的俄罗斯探险家尼古拉·普热瓦利斯基（Nikolay Przhevalsky）的姓氏取的名字，但在中亚，它们还有其他称呼：在蒙古，它们一直被称为“takhi”；在哈萨克斯坦，它们被叫作“kertagy”或“kerkulan”。这种野马与那些驯养的家马完全不同，甚至不是同一个物种。它们的染色体数量也不同，家马有 64 条染色体，普氏野马则有 66 条，它们并非家马未经驯化的祖先，与家马分属马科谱系的不同部分。世界各地大多数在野外跑来跑去的马，比如美洲野马等，实际上只是驯养马的野生后代。人们普遍认为普氏野马从未被人类驯化过，是地球上最后现存的野马，但依据 2018 年发表在《科学》（Science）杂志上的一项研究，普氏野马的祖先是已知最早的驯化马，大约 5500 年前由哈萨克斯坦北部的波泰人饲养。人们认为野马真有野性，其实是因为它们从驯化中逃脱，并不是本来就是野生。有点像你在城市里遇到的流浪猫和真正的野猫物种之间的区别。如果你去网上搜普氏野马的照片，就会发现它们和普通的马非常相似，只看这些照片你可能不会觉得普氏野马有什么异常，但它确实有一些明显不同于家马的特征：超级粗的脖子，就像马界的健美运动员；浓密且质感极好的鬃毛，但发型做得很糟糕，像被剃了平头，这种笔直冲天的发型还可能会让人联想到斑马，或者是驴和斑马的结合体。也就是说，你依然会觉得它是“马”，只是长得不那么标准。普氏野马的行为模式与家马完全不同，尽管它们中的很多都是在圈养环境里长大的，但还是不能很好地适应和人类一起生活。根据负责照顾普氏野马的动物园管理员所述，为了顺利进行如抽血或修剪蹄子这样的护理工作，必须给它们注射镇静剂。管理员不会给普氏野马钉蹄铁，也不会试图以任何方式驯服它们。即使被圈养，它们也依然是野生动物。普氏野马还具有特定的社会结构：它们是群居动物，有等级制度。所以会有一匹公马担任马群的首领，它还有一群母马作为“后宫”。通常认为，每个马群中会有许多这样的小群体。而在这些小群体之间也存在着等级制度。至于普氏野马如何在最近成了短视频平台的网红，有人梳理出了一条时间线：今年 6 月 9 日，美国犹他州一家名为“Lazy B Equine Rescue and Sanctuary”的马匹救护所发布了一段视频，视频中，一匹鬃毛直立、非常矮壮的马在围栏里跑来跑去，配文是：“我们刚刚收容的难道是一匹雌性普氏野马？！”他们表示已经预定了 DNA 测序，后来又说测序耗时长达六周，还要加上邮寄的时间。（7 月 10 日，救护所在自己的的短视频账号上发布了测序结果，表示这确实是一匹纯种普氏野马。）6 月 11 日，科罗拉多州的一名少年在看过上述那段视频后又发布了一段视频，视频中有一匹马，看起来也像普氏野马，并配文：“pov，你不小心救了一匹纯种普氏野马种马。”账号的主人声称“DNA 测序的结果是纯种普氏野马”，还联系了“动物园和品牌董事会”，并“被许可留下它”。然后，神奇的算法推荐机制把这些短视频推送给了很多对马不感兴趣的网友。两个独立的账号从 6 月开始发布相关的视频，分别声称他们可能得到了一匹普氏野马，这是很诡异的，因为普氏野马濒临灭绝，而科学家正在密切关注着这一物种的动向。不管怎么说，在没有得到特别许可的情况下拥有濒临灭绝的动物是非法的。撇开语焉不详的短视频不谈，普氏野马的救助工作实际上是一个跌宕起伏的故事，直到今天还在发生一些关键的转折。无论如何，这些短视频客观上为我们打开了一个可以公开讨论这个话题的窗口，让我们得以回溯整个保护历程。通常认为，大约在 19 世纪初，普氏野马开始在野外灭绝。很难确定它们灭绝的具体时间、地点和原因，但最有可能的相关因素是人类的狩猎和偷猎活动，以及种种与人类有关或无关的环境变化。一些普氏野马在 19 世纪末到 20 世纪初之间被捕获并运往欧洲，并在那里被圈养起来。那时人们还没有真正意识到它们的数量正在急剧下降。二战后，它们的数量加速下降，到 20 世纪 60 年代，人们终于发现普氏野马已经在野外灭绝了，只剩下圈养的种群，大约有 30~40 匹，其中只有十几匹能够繁殖后代。而在当时，还没有利用野外灭绝物种的圈养种群来成功挽救物种的先例，普氏野马正面临着异常严峻的瓶颈效应。也就是说，当今世界上的所有普氏野马都是这十几匹个体的后裔。利用圈养种群拯救极度濒危野生动物的尝试在那时刚刚起步。比如一种看起来很酷的羚羊——阿拉伯剑羚（Oryx leucoryx），在 1972 年被宣布野外灭绝。自 20 世纪 70 年代以来，美国圣迭戈动物园野生动物联盟（San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance）的一些成员就在从事这项工作。他们一直在努力做的一件事，就是突破可能只剩 12 只普氏野马个体的瓶颈，并保护这一物种的遗传多样性。后面发生的事我们就都知道了，他们成功摆脱了那个可怕的瓶颈。利用 1980 年前后采集的同一匹雄性普氏野马细胞样本，圣迭戈动物园在 2020 年和 2023 年先后成功克隆出了两匹小马，一只名为库尔特（Kurt），另一只名为奥利（Ollie），都是以参与育种计划的科学家名字命名的。但是，拯救物种的最终目的并不是一直克隆它们；而是要将它们重新引入原生栖息地，这项工作实际上已经取得了一些阶段性成果。1980-1990 年间，野生动物联盟的科学家们一直在将普氏野马重新引入蒙古、中国和俄罗斯，效果也不错：截至目前，生活在野外的普氏野马有 1000 余匹，占普氏野马个体总数的一半左右。有趣的是，在未来几千年都不适合人类居住的切尔诺贝利禁区中，生活着很多上世纪 90 年代后期被引入的普氏野马。2019 年的一项研究表明，它们可以在切尔诺贝利的各种人造建筑中自由地闲逛、睡觉和交配，生活闲适且惬意。这项工作也面临过一些挫折。2003 年，将普氏野马重新引入哈萨克斯坦一个国家公园的努力失败了。人们尽了最大的努力，但最终没能成功建立本地种群。这些马在哈萨克斯坦的生态系统中已经缺席了很长一段时间，今年 6 月份，新一轮的放归计划启动了，首批 7 匹普氏野马从捷克布拉格动物园（Prague Zoo）和德国柏林的一家动物园乘飞机抵达哈萨克斯坦。除了遗传多样性瓶颈，重新将普氏野马引入哈萨克斯坦须要面临的其他障碍也是巨大的。根据相关工作人员的描述，各种繁琐的文书工作是最大的障碍之一。因为普氏野马已经在哈萨克斯坦消失很久了，所以它们甚至没有被纳入保护物种，而……[查看全文]
The Conservation Efforts That Brought Back the Last Truly Wild Horse
Rachel Feltman: Wild horses are pretty rare outside of classic rock songs. Some of the most famous ones, like those on Assateague Island, aren’t actually wild at all. They’re the feral descendants of domesticated horses. But the animal shown in a few recent viral TikToks may be another matter entirely: a horse of a different color, if you will—or more accurately, a horse of a different species.For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Associate news editor and friend of the pod Allison Parshall is here today to tell us more about these majestic beasts.Before we get into it, I have one very important question to start us off, which is: How do you say the name of this horse?Allison Parshall: I would love to tell you—a lot of my sources when I asked gave me different answers, so, you know, we’re going to take this with a grain of salt. It is spelled P-R-Z-E-W-A-L-S-K-I, but it is pronounced shuh-val-ski, or pshuh-val-ski—a lot of people will put a P in the front, and I’m not quite sure my tongue knows how to do that. But—so we’re going to go with shuh-val-ski for now. This is the name that Western science has given them after a Russian explorer quote, unquote “discovered” them in the Central Asian steppes, but they’ve long been called other names in that part of the world, too. In Mongolia they’ve long been called takhi, and in Kazakhstan they’re called the kertagy or the kerkulan.Feltman: All extremely reasonable names.Parshall: Yes, I won’t claim that I’m pronouncing either of those names correctly either.These are a totally different species from the domesticated horse that you may or may not have ridden in your childhood and/or your adulthood. They even have a different number of chromosomes—they’re not an ancestor of the domesticated horse; they’re just a different part of the horse family tree entirely. The horses that roam free around the world, like the wild mustangs, they are actually feral, so they’re descendants of domesticated horses. But these are wild as far as we know—and there’s some controversy about this—but as far as we know, the [Przewalski’s horse] was never domesticated by humans. So it’s kind of like the difference between a feral, stray cat that you find in an alley—as the wild horses—and, like, a wild cat. So these are fairly different.Feltman: That’s very cool. I had a, a cat once that was a stray that I’m pretty sure had a little bit of a not-domesticated cat in him, and he was weird [laughs].Parshall: [Laughs] Behavior totally changes with domestication, and we can totally see this with the Przewalski’s horses. I would like to do a little experiment, perhaps. I want you to just look up a picture of a Przewalski’s horse and tell me what it looks like to you.Feltman: All right, so I’m looking at a bunch of pictures of Przewalski horses.They definitely are very horselike. I don’t think that if you showed me this in isolation, with no context, I would think there was something wrong with this horse, but they definitely have some distinct features: really thick-necked—definitely look like the bodybuilders of the horse world; also kind of look like a bad sort of buzz cut—really thick, nice head of hair but terrible haircut.Parshall: The mane that sticks straight up looks more like a zebra than a horse.Feltman: Mm, yeah, it’s like, once you’re really looking at them—again, in the context of knowing that it’s a different species—you’re like, “Yeah, like, the—parts of it kind of look more like a donkey, parts of it look more like a zebra.”And it’s interesting, you know, in some of these pictures, there are calves—you know, baby Przewalski horses—and they look actually much less standard horse to me. Like them, if I saw them in isolation, I would be like, “What is that?” [Laughs] “What’s wrong with that baby horse?” ’Cause they’re just kind of more gangly.Parshall: These animals have totally different behavior. Despite the fact that a lot of them have been raised in captivity, they’re not comfortable around humans. Like, the zookeepers that take care of them—I talked to a couple—they have to sedate them in order to do anything like draw blood or trim their hooves. They don’t shoe them. They’re not trying to tame them in any way. These are still wild animals, even the ones that are living in captivity.They also have a particular social structure: So they’re group animals, and they have a hierarchy. So there’s one stallion that’s, like, the head of the group, and then he’s got a harem of mares. And so herds can have multiple of these groups, but that’s kind of the general idea. And even within those groups, there’ll be a hierarchy of stallion and harems within them. So, yeah, they’re very particular, they are wild animals, and I now love them.Feltman: Why is the Internet suddenly obsessed with them?Parshall: I asked myself that when I got the videos served to me by the TikTok algorithm. I have made no indication that I like horses—I’m not exactly sure why it’s given me this, but I’m glad it did because basically, on TikTok, we had two separate accounts that started posting videos in June, claiming that they may have acquired a Przewalski’s horse, which would be very strange because this species is endangered and it’s kept tabs on very closely by scientists.So here’s kind of the timeline: On June 9 a rescue and sanctuary for horses in Utah called Lazy B Equine Rescue and Sanctuary posted a video of a very stocky horse with a mane that sticks straight up running around in a pen, and the text over the video said, “Did we just have a Przewalski mare surrendered?!” They said that they ordered a DNA test and later clarified that that would take up to six weeks, plus postage time.So then two days later a teenager in Colorado, having seen that video from the equine sanctuary, posted a video of a horse that—again, to my untrained eye—looks Przewalski-ish, with the text, “pov, you accidentally rescued a purebred Przewalski stud.” They called him Shrek, and the other place called theirs Fiona, so that’s kind of cute.Feltman: Going from Przewalski-ish horse—which is a great phrase; thank you for that—to, like, “This is a purebred stud,” that’s a big jump.Parshall: They said that they were “able to pull hair samples” and that, quote, “his DNA came back as a purebred Przewalski.” They also said they contacted, quote, “the zoo, as well as the brand board” and that they, quote, “have been told [that] we can keep him.”For what it’s worth, it is illegal to own endangered animals without special permits, like the ones that zoos or rescue facilities might have.But these are definitely extraordinary claims, and I certainly cannot speak to the veracity of them, since there’s been no specific evidence provided. Lazy B Equine Rescue and Sanctuary has not claimed that it’s 100 percent sure it’s a Przewalski.Feltman: I can respect asking that question with an interrobang and then seeking confirmation [laughs].Parshall: I think “confirmation” is the word of the day. The tone of the videos was like, “As soon as I saw this horse, I knew it was something rare and extraordinary: a Przewalski’s horse,” so I wanted to know what that meant.And it turns out there’s a ton going on right now with these horses. You know, TikTok rumors aside, they’re actually an incredible conservation story, and there’s important things happening right now with them.Feltman: Well, I’m so glad that TikTok has given us an excuse to talk about them. So what happened to these horses, to backtrack a little bit?Parshall: They died off in the wild starting around the 1800s, we think. It’s hard to pin down exactly when or why or even where, in parts of the world, they went extinct, but it’s most likely a combination of hunting and poaching from humans and environmental changes that may or may not be attributable to humans.So some were captured and transported to Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s and kept in captivity there. That was kind of before anyone really realized that their numbers were in perilous decline. There was a very sharp decline after World War II, and by the 1960s it became clear that the horses in captivity were the only ones left. So they’re extinct in the wild, and in captivity there were, like, 30 to 40 around the mid-20th century, and only around a dozen of them—maybe a few more—were capable of reproducing. All of the Przewalski’s that we have today are descended from around a dozen.Feltman: Wow, that’s quite a bottleneck, so how did we manage to bring them back?Parshall: It was definitely a very dire situation. At the time there weren’t really any examples of animals that had gone extinct in the wild but were successfully saved by captive breeding.Those efforts had really just started up, like, for example, with the Arabian oryx—which is a very cool-looking antelope that I would recommend looking it up—that went extinct [in the wild] by 1972.I spoke with Oliver Ryder. He’s of the San Diego Wildlife [Alliance], and he’s been working on this since the 1970s—the San Diego Zoo has been really an important part of it. And one of the things they’ve been trying to do—like you mentioned, a bottleneck of only 12-ish individuals—they really need to make sure they preserve genetic diversity.Now they’ve reached the point where, you know, they’re out of that horrible bottleneck, but they need to make sure that genetic diversity is not lost. So they’ve actually cloned a horse twice, the same horse, from around 1980 the samples were taken. There’s now two foals. One was born in 2020 and then one in 2023. Their names are Kurt and Ollie, both after scientists that were part of the breeding program.And the ultimate goal, though, is not just, like, clone them forever; it’s to reintroduce them to their native habitat. And some of that’s already been done, actually. They’ve been reintroducing them since, like, the 1980s and 1990s into Mongolia, China and Russia, and they’ve actually been doing pretty well: about half of the animals alive today—so a bit over 1,000—live in the wild.And there’s also other ones in reserves—I thought this was so interesting—but the Chernobyl exclusion zone, which will not be deemed habitable for humans for, like, thousands of years, there’s actually a good number of the horses just roaming around there. They reintroduced them in the late 1990s there, and there was this charming study from 2019 that showed that they’re actually hanging out, sleeping in and mating in human-made structures like barns.Feltman: Yeah, I’ve talked about the Chernobyl situation on my other podcast, The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, before, and it is wild how many studies now are like, “Yeah, the radiation was no good, but, like, it turns out that it was less bad than having humans was,” which is, you know, humbling, I would say, humbling. But I’m so glad they’re having fun [laughs].Parshall: There’s even newer developments. So that was all back in the 1990s and then some of these reintroduction efforts in, like, the 2000s and 2010s. But then most recently they’re back in Kazakhstan.So there was a failed reintroduction effort in Kazakhstan to a national park in 2003. Like, they tried their hardest, but the herds didn’t make it. These horses have been absent from the ecosystem in Kazakhstan for a very long time, but they were finally flown, about seven of them, from the Prague Zoo and a zoo in Berlin in June. The horses are lovely. One of them was named Zorro, which I think is cute. And another one is named Tessa.Feltman: That is very cute. So obviously this has been a huge success, but what were the hurdles they faced—other than the genetic bottleneck we talked about?Parshall: The hurdles for reintroduction are vast. A lot of the people I talked to were like, “Red tape, paperwork was one of the biggest things.” For example, they were absent for so long from Kazakhstan that they weren’t even classified as a protective species. So those were finally added back in 2021, which was...[full transcript]
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