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Horse

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Two horses, in Camargue.

Horse (scientific name : Equus caballus) is a large domestic mammal. Horse can be mounted. Horses were domesticated about 4,500 years B.C., and, before the invention of the motor, were used worldwide, to be mounted, or to tow carriages, etc.

There are nowadays many breeds of horses, including the smaller poney, and the race horses.

A male horse is called a stallion, a female, a mare, and a baby, a foal.

Wild horses[edit | edit source]

All current horses descend from bred horses. Their ancestor was a wild horse, now disappeared, called tarpan, that lived in steppes, in Europe and Asia. Though the tarpan disappeared, its cousin, the Przewalski's horse subsist, but is critically endangered. Przewalski's horses is native from central Asia steppes (especially Mongolia), but has now disappeared in the wild. Some are still living in zoos, and are planned to be reintroduced into the wild.

When Europeans went to the New World, they took horses with them, and some escaped. There were no horses in America until then. The escaped horses became wild and lived in herds. They are known as mustangs.

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