There are over 100 million horses, donkeys and mules in the world today and owners of these animals can be found on almost every continent and in almost every society. The Horse Course will cover many unique aspects of equine ownership and touch upon the science behind many of today’s management practices.
Introduction to the World’s Equids
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马的课程：基本护理和管理介绍
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从本节课中
Introduction to The Horse Course
Welcome to Week 1 of The Horse Course! To start off the course, we will begin discussing what exactly an “equid” is. We will cover the many equine species inhabiting our globe. Next, we’ll jump into the history of horses and donkeys, touching upon how they have made such an impact on our own societal development. The second half of week 1 will cover the many breeds of horses and donkeys. We will finish up with a lecture on the equine hybrids.
与讲师见面
Chris J. Mortensen, Ph.D.Professor
Animal Sciences
All right.
Well, welcome to our first lecture, the World's Equids.
Now you may ask yourself, what's an equid.
And it, it's kind of the term for these
animals that fall under this taxonomic family known as Equidae.
So you know, the, the, the first one that falls into Equidae is, is the horse.
Which, you know?
Obviously, this course is about.
And the two scientific terms for the horse is Equus caballus and Equus ferus.
Now Equus caballus is for the domestic type horse.
And then Equus ferus is for the wild
type horse, which today is, is the Przewalski horse.
That's, that's the only one that, that, that's left of the wild type.
Even though we have you know, feral horses from Equus caballus that,
that have been released in the wild, and, and are now feral.
They're still Equus caballus.
Now the next classification of an equid is a donkey
or an ass, as known throughout many parts of the world.
And their scientific name is Equus asinus.
And then the final member of this family is the zebra.
So, you know, there's many subspecies of Equus that are
zebras that we're going to talk about later in this lecture.
So, I couldn't really fit them all on this line here.
But, there's one more that we, we can't forget about.
So, we have the horses, the donkeys and
the zebras, but you can also consider these hybrids.
Which, really is the most common is the mule.
As an equid.
So they, they are equids they're just a cross
species of you know, Equus caballus and Equus asinus,
or there's actually zhorses and zonkeys which in the
lecture later this week that you'll lean more about.
Now the next thing we want to look at
is the global population and the best information
I could find is this report from the
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
And they update, you know, livestock species, you
know, throughout the world, through surveys or estimations.
And their last estimate from 2011 is, there's
58,million horses on earth, which is pretty amazing.
And then if we look at donkeys, or
asses, there's another 43 million equids out there.
So again, you know, you have 58 million horses, 43 million donkeys.
And then, this was really surprising to me.
I didn't realize how many mules we actually have on Earth, around the world.
And there's over 10 million mules, which is, which is really cool.
So, overall we're looking at a 111 million equids, you know,
donkeys, horses and mules around, you know, many continents and [UNKNOWN].
But the only one whether it's in the horse
because they probably couldn't survive down there very well.
But you know what's really exciting about that is, you know, with all of
these, these animals, is there's all those
owners, that are enthusiastic about owning them.
We actually need them.
In their daily lives to, to run their business or to get to work or to do
the things that man has been doing with
horses for and donkeys and mules for 6,000 years.
So, pretty exciting data there.
Now if we look at breaking it down by country, I just listed the top seven.
And the United States came in ranked
number one with over 10 million horses, which
wasn't too surprising to me because, you know,
the horse hot bed here in the States.
But you go down this list you know China
has 6.7 million, still huge population of horses there.
Mexico 6.3 million, breaking it down and the one country that really
surprised me was Ethiopia with over 2 million head of horses in it.
I was really surprised that they had that many more than Russia.
And then if you go look at the donkeys
or the asses, Ethiopia's number one with 6.5 million.
You know then again breaking it down, you know, China, Pakistan, Egypt.
I was fortunate enough to, to be in Egypt a few years ago and I,
I saw plenty of donkeys still pulling carts
you know, work in the fields with agriculture.
You know big part of their life there
in Egypt, beautiful animals, you know Mexico and then
a couple of other countries in Africa, Niger and
Nigeria huge populations of donkeys that are still working.
For their owners today.
And then when you break down this population of mules, Mexico came in
number one with 3.2 million, and then
China there, Brazil, Morocco, there's Ethiopia again.
So, Ethiopia has a huge equid population.
Peru and Argentina.
Now we can't forget the other, you know, the, the wild type animals.
Now Equus ferus, there's a few thousand.
There's Przewalski horses still roaming.
You know, in Mongolia and China they were re-released, so they're,
they're still out there in some preserves as we reestablish that population.
So.
Really only the true wild equids are the zebras and the wild asses.
So if we look first at the plains zebra you can see their scientific
name Equus quagga and this is what
everybody thinks of when they think of zebras.
They think back to the Serengeti Plain you know, in Tanzania, running away from
predators and you know, that's what we typically think of and there's over 600.
60,000 of these animals.
So they're still doing relatively well in the wild, but
the other two populations of zebras are, aren't doing so hot.
The first is the mountain zebra, you
know, Equus zebra, and they're listed as vulnerable.
There's only about 9,000 of these animals left
and they're in the southwestern region of, of Africa.
And what's unique about these animals too is you can see that dewlap right there.
And that was.
That's important because these animals are, you know, in hotter parts of Africa.
And that helps them thermoregulate that extra skin.
So it, it's really cool if you ever see these at a, at a zoo
or if you're fortunate enough to see them in the wild, you can see that dewlap.
And it, it, it's pretty unique, to them.
And then the other zebra species is the Grevy's zebra.
And this is the one that's endangered.
There's, there's about 2000 animals left.
And they range from really central to southeastern Africa.
And I've done a little bit of work with these guys.
And you know, really need to be
aware that they are endangered, they're being overhunted.
You know, they're in competition with, with livestock in that part of the world.
And, and just kind of a, you know, something to
be aware of that those animals are, are in trouble.
And then, you know, we don't want them to end
up like the quagga here which went extinct in 1875.
And what's really cool about this one is.
You know, it looks like a half
zebra half donkey, and unfortunately there's, there's no
live specimens anymore and we, we actually
can't look at these animals in their beauty.
Now there, there's two major classes of, of wild donkeys, or wild asses.
And there's the African wild ass and the Asiatic
wild ass, so our domestic populations came from these animals.
And what's left of the African wild ass is really only the Somali wild ass.
And there's maybe 600 animals left in the world.
And it's really unfortunate.
You can see here the the Somali wild ass.
You know, with that leg striping, these are beautiful animals.
I've been fortunate enough to do some research with these guys and I, and
I hope to continue to do research with them in trying to save this population.
I really hope they don't go extinct in my lifetime even though that's what
it's looking like as they, they lose their habitat and, and, and some other problems.
And then.
Next to that is the the Nubian wild ass
that went extinct within probably the last 20 years.
It's certainly extinct in the wild and.
You can see what's unique about this is,
this one had the stripe over the shoulders.
So when you look at domestic donkeys today, which we will later in the week.
Looking at breeds of donkeys you can still see leg stripping and that back
stripe you know, from their original Nubian wild ass and the Somali wild ass.
Now the Asiatic wild asses, they're, they're ones
known as you know, the onagers, the kulans.
These are endangers, so there's maybe 8,000 of these left in the wild.
So again competition with, with humans.
You know also a, a major danger to these populations is, you know feral
donkeys that get away from their owners
are actually breeding with the wild population.
So you get a mixing of the genetics and you no longer have a
true wild, you know Asiatic wild donkey or a true wild African wild donkey.
So, so anyways, but they, they are out
there and they are part of what's an equid.
Now, our next lecture is we're going to start with the evolution of, of the horse
and, to a lesser extent, donkeys and
zebras, where they, they all have common ancestors.
So, we'll, we'll cover that in much more detail in the next lecture.
