Caitlin B.

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Caitlin B.

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Konik horses are not Tarpans
Myths & facts about the European wild horse
For tens of thousands of years during the last glacial period, most of Europe, from Spain to Russia, was covered in great grassy plains, known as mammoth steppes. There, long-gone animal species like giant deer and mammoths shared the space with wild horses, like the tarpans. Most of those species became extinct about 12000 years ago, when climate change, possibly aided by human expansion and the isolation of animal subpopulations, turned the mammoth steppes into enormous forests.

Wild horses, however, managed to adapt and survive in this new ecosystem, but eventually became extinct, mostly due to human activity, by the end of the 16th century. More recently, there have been numerous attempts to breed back the European wild horses, the best known of which gave rise to the Polish Konik. Konik horses have since been used as ecological substitutes of wild horses and reintroduced to various parts of Europe, but recent studies cast doubt on their authenticity and suitability to replace wild horses in European ecosystems.

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