February 23, 2018 – The Japan Times
There are no living wild horses on Earth. That’s according to a study that unexpectedly rewrites the horse family tree based on a new DNA analysis of their ancestry.
What most people thought were the last remaining wild horses on Earth — known as Przewalski’s horses — were actually domesticated horses that escaped their owners.
According to Beth Shapiro, a UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute affiliated faculty member and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California Santa Cruz, the findings are “super interesting.”
“Certainly, it is surprising to see that Przewalski’s horses are descended from early domestic horses, as this is not what people tended to believe,” said Shapiro, who was not involved in the study.
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New DNA analysis shows that all the world’s wild horses are already extinct
