Tarpan
The tarpan was a free-ranging horse population of the Eurasian steppe from the 18th to the 20th century. What qualifies as a tarpan is subject to debate;: whether tarpans were genuine wild horses, feral domesticated horses, or hybrids is unclear. The last individual believed to be a tarpan died in captivity in the Russian Empire in 1909.
Beginning in the 1930s, several attempts were made to develop horses that looked like tarpans through selective breeding, called breeding back by advocates. The breeds that resulted included the Heck horse, and a derivation of the Konik breed, all of which have a primitive appearance, particularly in having a grullo coat colour. Some of these horses are now commercially promoted as "tarpans", although such animals are only domesticated breeds and not the wild animal themselves.
Name and etymology
The name "tarpan" or "tarpani" derives from a Turkic language name meaning "wild horse". The Tatars and the Cossacks distinguished the wild horse from the feral horse; the latter was called Takja or Muzin.Taxonomy
The tarpan was first described by Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin in 1771; he had seen the animals in 1769 in the district of Bobrov, near Voronezh. In 1784, Pieter Boddaert named the species Equus ferus, referring to Gmelin's description. Unaware of Boddaert's name, Otto Antonius published the name Equus gmelini in 1912, again referring to Gmelin's description. Since Antonius' name refers to the same description as Boddaert's, it is a junior objective synonym. The domesticated horse, named Equus caballus by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, is now thought to be descended from the tarpan; indeed, many taxonomists consider them to belong to the same species. By a strict application of the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the tarpan ought to be named E. caballus, or if considered a subspecies E. caballus ferus. Bbiologists have generally ignored the letter of the rule, though, and used E. ferus for the tarpan to avoid confusion with the domesticated subspecies.Whether the small, free-roaming horses seen in the Russian steppes during 18th and 19th centuries and called "tarpan" were indeed wild, never-domesticated horses, hybrids of the Przewalski's horse and local domestic animals, or simply feral horses is debated. Most studies have been based on only two preserved specimens, and research to date has not positively linked the tarpan to Pleistocene- or Holocene-era animals.
In 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature "conserved the usage of 17 specific names based on wild species, which are predated by or contemporary with those based on domestic forms", confirming E. ferus for the undomesticated wild horse. Taxonomists who consider the domestic horse a subspecies of the wild horse should use Equus ferus caballus; the name Equus caballus remains available for the domestic horse where it is considered to be a separate species.
Appearance
Traditionally two subtypes have been proposed, the forest tarpan and steppe tarpan, although only minor differences in type. The general view is that the only subspecies is the tarpan, Equus ferus ferus. The last individual, which died in captivity in 1909, was between tall at the withers and had a thick, falling mane, a grullo coat colour, dark legs, and primitive markings, including a dorsal stripe and shoulder stripes.seem to exist
Several coat colour genotypes have been identified within European wild horses from the Pleistocene and Holocene - those creating bay, black, and leopard complex are known from the wild horse population in Europe and were depicted in cave paintings of wild horses during the Pleistocene. The dun gene, a dilution gene seen in Przewalski's horse that also creates the grullo or "blue dun" coat seen in the Konik has not yet been studied in European wild horses. At least some wild horses likely had a dun coat.
Historical reports are ambiguous on whether tarpans had standing manes like wild equines or falling manes like domesticated horses.
The appearance of European wild horses may be reconstructed with genetic, osteologic, and historic data. One genetic study suggests that bay was the predominant colour in European wild horses. During the Mesolithic, a gene coding a black coat colour appeared on the Iberian peninsula. This colour spread east, but was less common than bay in the investigated sample and never reached Siberia. Bay in combination with dun results in the "bay dun" colour seen in Przewalski's horses; black with dun creates the grullo coat. A loss of the dun dilution may have been advantageous in more forested western European landscapes, as dark colours were a better camouflage in forests. Pangaré or "mealy" coloration, a characteristic of other wild equines, might have been present in at least some European wild horses, as historic accounts report a light belly.
Historic references report that most tarpans were black dun colour. Some black individuals were reported to have domestic colours like white or grey legs. Authors, such as Peter Pallas, believed tarpans to be escaped farm horses.
History
Wild horses have been present in Europe since the Pleistocene and ranged from southern France and Spain east to central Russia. Cave drawings of primitive predomestication horses are at Lascaux, France, and in Cave of Altamira, Spain, as well as artifacts believed to show the species in southern Russian empire, where a horse of this type was domesticated around 3000 BC. Equus ferus had a continuous range from Western Europe to Alaska; historic material suggests wild horses lived in most parts of Holocene continental Europe and the Eurasian steppe, except for parts of Scandinavia, Iceland, and Ireland.DNA
DNA obtained from a "tarpan" that lived in the steppes of the Kherson region during the mid-19th century shows its ancestry to be a mixture between horses native to Europe and found with the Corded Ware Culture and horses closely related to the DOM2 population, the ancestors of modern domestic horses.. This is not consistent with tarpans as the wild ancestor of, or a feral version of, DOM2. Nor is the tarpan a hybrid with Przewalski's horses.Forest tarpan
The "forest horse" or "forest tarpan" was a hypothesis of various 20th-century natural scientists, including Tadeusz Vetulani, who suggested that the continuous forestation of Europe after the last ice age created forest-adapted subtype of the wild horse, which he named Equus sylvestris. However, historic references do not describe any major difference between the populations, so most authors assume to exist only one subspecies of western Eurasian wild horse, Equus ferus ferus.Nevertheless, a stocky type of horse living in forests and highlands was described during the 19th century in Spain, the Pyrenees, the Camargue, the Ardennes, Great Britain, and the southern Swedish upland.
They had a robust head and strong body, and a long, frizzy mane. The colour was described as faint brown or yellowish brown with eel stripe and leg stripes, or wholly black legs. The flanks and shoulders were spotted, some of them tended to an ashy colour. They dwelled in rocky habitats and showed intelligent and fierce behaviour. Yet, those horses were never colloquially called "tarpans".
Black wild horses were found in Dutch swamps, with a large skull, small eyes, and a bristly muzzle. Their mane was full, with broad hooves, and curly hair. However, these were possibly feral and not wild horses.
Herodotus described light-coloured wild horses in an area now part of Ukraine in the fifth century BCE. In the 12th century, Albertus Magnus stated that mouse-coloured wild horses with a dark eel stripe lived in the German territory, and in Denmark, large herds were hunted.
16th century free-ranging horses in Europe
Wild horses still were common in the east of Prussia during the 15th and early 16th centuries. During the 16th century, wild horses disappeared from most of the mainland of Western Europe and became less common in Eastern Europe, as well. Belsazar Hacquet saw wild horses in the Polish zoo in Zamość during the Seven Years' War. According to him, those wild horses were of small body size, had a blackish-brown colour, a large and thick head, short dark manes and tail hair, and a "beard". They were absolutely untameable and defended themselves harshly against predators.Kajetan Kozmian visited the population at Zamość, as well, and reported that they were small and strong, had robust limbs, and were a consistently dark mouse colour. Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin witnessed herds in Voronezh in 1768. Those horses were described as very fast and shy, fleeing at any noise, and as small, with small, pinned ears and a short, frizzly mane. The tail was shorter than in domestic horses. They were typically mouse-coloured with a light belly and legs becoming black, although grey and white horses were mentioned, as well. The coat was long and dense. The horses at Zamosc were never called "tarpan" back in their lifetimes.
Peter Simon Pallas witnessed possible tarpans in the same year in southern Russia. He thought they were feral animals that escaped during the confusions of wars. These herds were important game of the Tatars and numbered between five and 20 animals. The horses he described had a small body, large and thick heads, short, frizzly manes, and short tail hair, as well as pinned ears. Their colour was described as faint brownish, sometimes brown or black. He also reported of obvious domestic hybrids with light-coloured legs or grey coats.
The tarpans of 18th century Europe
The Natural History of Horses by 19th-century author Charles Hamilton Smith also described tarpans. According to Smith, the herds of free-ranging horses numbered from a few to hundred individuals. They often were mixed with domestic horses, and alongside pure herds there were herds of feral horses or hybrids. The colour of alleged pure tarpans was described as consistently brown, cream-coloured or mouse-coloured. The short, frizzy mane was reported to be black, as were the tail and legs. The ears were of varying size, but set high on the skull. The eyes were small.According to Smith, tarpans made stronger sounds than domestic horses, and the overall appearance of these horses was mule-like.