5 ms·
What do the wild horses actually eat? The steppes is a pretty barren place right?
by blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
What do the wild horses actually eat? The steppes is a pretty barren place right?
- Apocryphon 2y ago[flagged]
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoYes, and little else. A lot of it is land with short grasses as well although that varies by region. I guess I am surprised it would be enough for horses nutritionally.
- orwin 2y agoIt was enough for mongol/kereit/naiman/turcik horses (eastern steppe horses?). Of the 5 snouts, only the horse could rely on grass only without peas or roots, which made it the king of the 5, everybody knew how to take care of a horse, even semi-nomad clans had 2 to 3 per adult.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoDidn’t those people all domesticate horses? I would think they may have farmed grains to feed the horses. And these introduced horses are meant to be wild.
- Ar-Curunir 2y agoAlmost all steppe peoples domesticated existing wild horses
- Apocryphon 2y agoWell, the horses are indigenous to that habitat, after all.
- philwelch 2y agoThe steppe is where the ancestors to modern domesticated horses came from. In fact that’s where they were first domesticated.
- rurp 2y agoFor a similar comparison, wild horses do surprisingly well in some desert regions of the Southwest US. It's a surprising treat to see a healthy herd of horses meandering through Joshua Trees. They can apparently do pretty well on sparse grasses and shrubs. Those horse populations do well enough that the BLM regularly kills some off to limit the numbers. Ostensibly it's to protect the environment, but given the number of legal and illegal cattle that's allowed to graze on those same public lands I think the culling is mostly at the behest of ranchers.
- MostlyStable 2y ago"Do surprisingly well" depends on your expectations I guess. Yes, it can be a treat to see a healthy herd. It's much less a treat to see emaciated, dehydrated horses, which are not that uncommon: https://stateline.org/2022/07/20/westerners-struggle-to-manage-booming-wild-horse-populations/ https://stateline.org/2022/07/20/westerners-struggle-to-mana... and while one can argue about the "true" motivations of the people arguing for culling/control, it's absolute true that conservation organizations think that feral horses are bad for the environment: https://wildlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FactSheet-HorsesAndBurros_FINAL.pdf https://wildlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FactSheet-Ho...
- sriacha 2y agoWild horses in North America are a very interesting question. All equids evolved in North America. For tens of millions of years they were here, and only have been gone for ~10,000 years until being reintroduced by the spanish. [1] [1] See the fantastic book "Twilight of the Mammoths"
- verisimi 2y agoI thought BLM was more of an urban thing..
- dantillberg 2y agoBureau of Land Management :)
- pvaldes 2y ago> What do the wild horses actually eat? The same that they eat in Chornobyl. Everything that is green except traffic lights. This animal are the equivalent to "Eurasian zebras" and was designed to roam around in arid places. They are really hard and able to fend for themselves, even under high predatory pressure and radioactivity levels.
- interludead 2y agoI think grasses make up the majority of a wild horse's diet
- mldbk 2y agoUsually they eat Artemisia[1]. Steppes are full of them. Even in winters horses are able to get through the snow and eat some grass. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_(plant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_(plant)