Talk:Przewalski's horse

Source material

New study about diet and foraging behavior in the wild: http://www.thehorse.com/articles/38491/tail-hairs-reveal-gobi-desert-equids-dietary-choices Montanabw^(talk) 17:51, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Source 30 is now pointing to a missing page. Here is a replacement from NBC News: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25211052/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/rare-horse-gets-reverse-vasectomy/ 81.136.160.186 (talk) 14:07, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Namesake

Who the heck was Przewalski?

– Dziękuję. Sca (talk) 16:24, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Never mind, it was Nikolay Przhevalsky, known in Polish as Nikołaj Przewalski. This should be added to the article. Sca (talk) 16:30, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

 Done Sca (talk) 20:11, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Feral, not wild

Based on the latest DNA analysis, Przewalski’s horses were in the same part of the phylogenetic tree as the Botai horses. From their relationship, it was clear that these “wild” horses were escaped Botai horses.

The media release - Ancient DNA upends the horse family tree: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/ancient-dna-upends-horse-family-tree

The report - Ancient genomes revisit the ancestry of domestic and Przewalski’s horses: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/02/21/science.aao3297

William Harris • (talk) • 09:24, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, and this means the article needs to be cleaned up. Right now we have "DNA research proved that they actually descend from the Horses of Botai, the most ancient known race of domesticated horses" and "This puts to rest the theory that Przewalski horses were derived from domestic horses". --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 13:18, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

It's certainly worth mentioning, but I would exercise caution. Remember WP:SCHOLARSHIP - these are tentative results that have only just been released, therefore cannot be said to have entered academic consensus as of yet. It's certainly very interesting, but has to weather the storm of peer scrutiny before it can be considered as fact. I think phrases such as "puts to rest" are a bit premature. Wasechun tashunka^HOWL_TRACK 17:44, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Wasechun tashunka, this is a very preliminary study, and news releases often state conclusions that the actual study does not back. I agree that we need to tread with considerable caution (for example, horses corraled and eaten may not have been "domesticated" in the "able to ride them" sense). Montanabw^(talk) 18:41, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Certainly, yes, a temperate approach is required. But at present the article contains contradictory statements. Richardson mcphillips (talk) 22:08, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

This isn't someone's thesis, this is an international team publishing their work in Science. The team includes Michael Hofreiter and with Ludovic Orlando coordinating it - these lads are at the forefront of their game and there is no mistake. You will be waiting about 3 years before a secondary author can get their head around what this team has done and provides a secondary source - these guys will have long moved on from then. I have raised the article's existence, it is now up the the editors associated with this page to progress as they think best. I will now visit the elephant page - DNA confirms three species and not two. William Harris • (talk) • 08:24, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

I just got a copy of the actual study today and am reading it. Given that there is a lot of technical content on methodology, I also shot off an email to a geneticist (PhD person who does horse research) to give me a scientist's take on the quality of the analysis, as I can only roughly interpret some of what they did (being that I'm not a geneticist). We can all take a look at how to use WP:PRIMARY in a way to bring this article up to date and clean up the contradictions. (If Richardson mcphillips and William Harris want to flag the contradiction areas with a tag, that will help us main editors get to them a little faster. In the meantime, the elephant thing sounds completely fascinating! Montanabw^(talk) 16:55, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

I did a pretty major rewrite of the Lineage section, but this was largely a cleanup of the pre-existing text - removed some inelegant phrasing, removed a segment that was flagged as unreferenced and wasn't entirely clear what it was trying to say anyhow, reduced redundancy and rearranged. Though I did expand the description of the new study a little, I have kept it isolated rather than fully integrating it in the section (other than to explicitly indicate earlier studies of domestic horses were addressing 'modern' ones), and if it is viewed as premature it can be removed without affecting the rest of the section. It should be noted that it is premature, at least in one sense: the recent study has not been formally published yet - what is available now is a paywalled pre-publication release, and usually these closely resemble the final publication but I can recall one instance in which a Science pre-release was found over the next several weeks to be so fatally flawed that it never formally appeared in the journal. Agricolae (talk) 17:42, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Contradiction regarding the population in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

The Population section contains a sentence and reference, "A population introduced in 1998 exists in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone protected from interference by humans, and is thought to be increasing in size.[21]" The reference is to a National Geographic article which gives no figures and sends a mixed message regarding the poaching problem. The Conservation efforts section flatly contradicts the sentence under Population, stating, "In Chernobyl, the population reproduced at a high rate, reaching up to 200 individuals until poachers decreased their number to just 60 in recent years.[30] As of 2011, only an estimated 30–40 individuals remained." I'm not sure what to make of the twin figures (60 vs 30-40) in the latter statement, is it better of worse than no figures from National Geographic? Does the National Geographic page really say horse numbers are increasing? I'm not really capable of focusing enough to judge any of this, not even if I wanted to merely adjust the language of the one or other of those sentences to mitigate the contradiction. I wish I was, contradictions like this don't encourage confidence in Wikipedia, and I wish I could improve the situation. eekee (talk) 13:38, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

• Addendum: I've been reading a few more pages on National Geographic today, and I'm not impressed by the quality of their reporting. I'm uncomfortable with their sensationalism. Even though sensationalism is perhaps necessary for a journal today, it's creepy when they toss in as "facts" things which were not reported closer to the time. For instance, placing "the first fossil hunter" in the 1920s! Maybe he was the first professional, I don't know. Another concerns the "little green men" annotation on a signal trace which led to the discovery of pulsars. NG categorically states the discoverer's boss was certain the signal was artificial. When I previously read about it, 30 years closer to the incident in question, I received no such impression at all. The discoverer and her boss merely joked about the possibility. Perhaps these flaws are inherent in the production of a popular magazine. eekee (talk) 14:22, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Geographic range

Other than “Gobi desert, Mongolia,” I don’t think there was any particular study of geographic distribution before the first extinction in the wild. @Agricolae:, if you know something I don’t, do link, but I don’t see the value of tagging for something that is not really doable? Montanabw^(talk) 19:18, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Bouman has pages on it, (thought I can't see it in the Google view available to me online). There is more to be said about the existence and natural history of this original wild population than just that 'they were rare in the wild when several were put in zoos'. Agricolae (talk) 19:36, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I can access some pages in Google, not sure if enough. I’m open to improvements...is there anything in particular you need to see? Montanabw^(talk) 19:44, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I would like to see something . . . anything . . . on the wild species. I mentioned the range as just one example of the type of information needed. All we say about the entire period from its discovery to its elimination is "The native population declined in the 20th century due to a combination of factors, with the wild population in Mongolia dying out in the 1960s." What factors? Based on what observations was it known to be in decline? We report when it was last seen, but where? Is it really not known more specifically that the Gobi? And how about the interactions of the local human population with the wild horses? etc. As currently written we seem only interested in the original population solely as a source for the zoo/reintroduced population, rather than as an entity itself meriting description. It would be like having an article on the California condor that only begins with it being taken into captivity in the 1980s, and only describing its captive rearing and re-release. Agricolae (talk) 20:12, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I hear you, it’s a time and priority issue for me. If you want to do a bit, I’d be glad to have a hand...Montanabw^(talk) 21:21, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I would have already done some if I had the time and sources, so I fully understand. Agricolae (talk) 23:17, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Why feral, not wild?

Can anyone explain why the authors of the 2018 Science article could conclude that the Przewalski horse has Botai ancestors... as opposed to merely being related? In my simplistic understanding, I would imagine that there is a merely certain amount of same & different genetic sequences... that possibly there are differences among regularly mutating sequences (e.g., mitochondria?), so it would be possible to decide at what time two groups split / when two groups last interbred... ... ... but then how can they conclude, that indidividual X (or: group X) is an ancestor of individual Y? ... let alone, that X was domestic when procreating? [Possible alternative explanations: X is related to the wild horse Z, and Z are the ancestors of Y... or X was born wild, procreated (producing a filly or fillies A), and was later domesticated... while A became the ancestors of Y?]

I'm sure the authors thought this through, and I would love to hear any attempts explaining how their genetic data led to their conclusions! Thanks for any attempts at an explanation! --Ibn Battuta (talk) 17:43, 19 August 2020 (UTC)