Steppe forth: Przewalski’s horses roam the West Lake national nature reserve near Xihu, northwest China, on May 13. | AFP-JIJI
According to Chinese legend, Sun said, the animals were discovered two millennia ago by an exiled criminal around the oasis of Dunhuang, a crossroads on the Silk Road.
“A man had been convicted and banished from Dunhuang. While he was walking near a lake he saw one of these horses.
“He made a mannequin and put it on a path the horse would follow. One day he took the place of the mannequin, and he was able to catch the horse to offer it to the emperor.
“The man then lied to the emperor, Han Wudi, saying the horse had sprung out of a spring. And he called it a heavenly horse. The emperor loved the horse so much that he wrote a poem about it.”
XIHU, CHINA – In the harsh desert steppe of far northwestern China, five prehistoric-looking Przewalski’s horses, once classified as extinct in the wild, emerge from the endless plains.
The horses — named after a Russian officer and explorer who spotted them around 1880 — bear a striking resemblance to those depicted in European cave paintings, with short necks, spiky manes and a yellow hue.
They graze calmly on a few strands of straw as the wind whips across the vast, open landscape.
“These ones here, they can be approached. The others will run away as soon as you get within 300 meters of them,” said Sun Zhicheng, an official at the 660,000-hectare West Lake national nature reserve.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Przewalski’s horses once roamed as far as Western Europe.
But as the centuries passed, climatic change reduced their habitat and the remainder were so widely hunted, mainly for food, that they were classified as extinct in the wild in 1960 — although a living specimen was later found in Mongolia.
But a few survived in European zoos, and now efforts are under way to reintroduce them back into the wild.
The Chinese project near Xihu in Gansu province faces daunting challenges — freezing winters, sweltering summers and limited supplies of food and water.
According to Chinese legend, Sun said, the animals were discovered two millennia ago by an exiled criminal around the oasis of Dunhuang, a crossroads on the Silk Road.
“A man had been convicted and banished from Dunhuang. While he was walking near a lake he saw one of these horses.
“He made a mannequin and put it on a path the horse would follow. One day he took the place of the mannequin, and he was able to catch the horse to offer it to the emperor.
“The man then lied to the emperor, Han Wudi, saying the horse had sprung out of a spring. And he called it a heavenly horse. The emperor loved the horse so much that he wrote a poem about it.”
In 1986 China purchased 18 of the horses from the United States, Britain and Germany and has since bred them in captivity, with their numbers growing to more than 70.
Starting in 2010, carefully selected batches have been released into the reserve.
“Now there are 27, 16 females and 11 males,” said Sun. “We even registered the birth of a foal in July 2011, a new success in our reintroduction process.”
But very few animals can endure an environment as hard and dry as Gansu’s desert steppe.
The horses eat grasses and certain plant species, said reserve employee Lu Shengrong, but when vegetation becomes sparse in winter, they will be fed dry alfalfa, straw, black beans and corn. The reserve is also expanding 10 wells.
Of the 2,000 or so Przewalski’s horses that now exist worldwide, about a quarter are part of efforts to reintroduce them to the wild, said Claudia Feh, a biologist doing similar work in Mongolia, where several hundred have been released.
The worst threat they face, she said, are ordinary horses, which can infect them with disease or crossbreed with them, diluting the gene pool.
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Read more …
The introduction of the Heavenly Horse to China (KaraKum Akhal Tekes website) about how the first war in 104 B.C. was fought because the Ferghanese refused to give up their prized heavenly horses to the Chinese …
Heavenly Horses and the Aftermath of Empire (Monks and Merchants, Asia Society website)
Japan also introduced “heavenly horses” during the Kofun Period as seen from the engraving relief on a tomb mirror below:
Detail of horse charriots during the Kofun period (5th-6th century). Bronze mirror. Eta-Funayama Tumulus. Kikusui-machi, Kumamoto. Tokyo National Museum. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
JAPANESE MYTHOLOGY & FOLKLORE 