Marwell Zoo in Winchester, Hampshire, is celebrating the birth of a rare Przewalski horse that went extinct in the wild for nearly four decades. The male foal was named Basil, born to parents Nogger and Speranzer on May 28. However, it is only now that they shared the wonderful news with the public.
Zoo staff said that the arrival of Basil is exciting because Przewalski's horse went extinct in the wild from 1969 until 2008. It is considered to be an endangered species that is native to Central Asia and was hunted to extinction by humans before it was reintroduced in the last 30 years.
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Przewalski's horse (Equus przewalskii) is the only species considered to be truly wild rather than simply feral because it is not descended from domesticated horses.
According to Yahoo! News, the newborn horse was named after the first male Przewalski's horse that lived in Marwell Zoo when it opened in 1972. Zookeepers said that the youngster is staying close to its mother and the females of the herd are very protective of the foal.
A Marwell Zoo spokesperson said that Basil Sr. was born in 1963 and joined Marwell in 1970 before the zoo opened in 1972 and later moved to San Diego Zoo. The newborn's name is also a nod to the 50th founding anniversary of Marwell Zoo this year.
Basil Jr. will surely go on to be part of an important effort of the European ex-situ breeding program to save their species from being endangered and ultimately extinct.
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About Przewalski's Horses
According to Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, Przewalski's horses are distant cousins of domestic horses in which DNA analyses suggest that they diverged from a common ancestor 500,000 years ago.
These horses are small and stocky with large heads, thick necks, and short legs. They also have a dark zebra-like erect mane with no forelock and a dark stripe that continues from the mane along its backbone to its dark, plume tail. Przewalski's horses are dun-colored and have a yellowish-white belly with dark lower legs and zebra-like stripes behind their knees.
They could grow 4.3 to 5 feet (1.3m to 1.5m) tall and 7.25 to 8.5 feet (2.2m to 2.6m) long and weigh up to 550 to 800 pounds (250kg to 360kg). Przewalski's foals can weigh up to 55 to 66 pounds (25kg to 30kg) at birth and can already stand and walk an hour after birth. Although, it will take them a few weeks before they can start to graze.
They may be an endangered species today, but they were once abundant in the Russian Steppes, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and northern China in the mid-18th century.
Competition between humans and livestock and environmental changes have forced these horses to move to East Asia, where they eventually became extinct in the wild.
RELATED ARTICLE: San Diego Zoo Global Successfully Clones Endangered Przewalski's Horse
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