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Science Quickly

Saving the Last Truly Wild Horse

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2 • 639 Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2024

⏱️ 15 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Przewalski’s horses are truly wild horses, even the ones held in captivity. They traditionally roamed the Central Asian steppes, so you can imagine everyone’s surprise when two separate accounts on TikTok claimed to have found a Przewalski’s horse here in the U.S. But as guest and Scientific American associate news editor Allison Parshall will tell you, the real story is the remarkable conservation efforts that led to a resurgence for this horse, which was once considered extinct in the wild. The Last Wild Horses Are Finally Returning to Their Natural Habitat  How a Cloned Ferret Inspired a DNA Bank for Endangered Species  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest and associate news editor Allison Parshall. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yachtold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:20.1

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

0:22.7

J-P. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O-J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

0:36.1

Wild horses are pretty rare outside of classic rock songs.

0:42.3

Some of the most famous ones like those on Assatea Island aren't actually wild at all.

0:48.3

They're the feral descendants of domesticated horses.

0:52.3

But the animal shown in a few recent viral TikToks may be

0:56.6

another matter entirely, a horse of a different color, if you will. Or more accurately,

1:03.0

a horse of a different species. For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman.

1:08.9

Associate News editor and friend of the Pod, Alison Partial,

1:12.4

is here today to tell us more about these majestic beasts. Before we get into it, I have one very

1:23.4

important question to start us off, which is, how do you say the name of this horse?

1:30.0

I would love to tell you, a lot of my sources when I asked gave me different answers.

1:34.1

So, you know, we're going to take this with a grain of salt. It is spelled, P-R-Z-E-W-A-L-S-K-I, but it is pronounced Shavalsky or Przvalsky. A lot of people will put a P in the front, and I'm not quite sure my tongue knows how to do that.

1:48.0

But so we're going to go with Shavalski for now.

1:49.9

This is the name that Western science has given them after a Russian explorer, quote-unquote,

1:54.1

discovered them in the Central Asian steps, but they've long been called other names in that

1:58.5

part of the world, too. In Mongolia, they've long been called Taki.

2:01.9

And in Kazakhstan, they're called the Kirtaga or the Kerkulon.

2:05.4

All extremely reasonable names.

...

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