Endlings: Przewalski's horse and Genghis Khan - Nov 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about BB ‘Endlings’ once more. This week’s animal – the Przewalski’s horse.

Now, last week’s episode, about the Thylacine, (aka the Tasmanian wolf), was rather lacklustre; this week’s episode is something else because of two points. One is that the Thylacine and the Przewalski’s wild horseserve as foils to each other – both were captured for the zoos, but while that served just as an extra cause of extinction for the Thylacine, for the Przewalski’s horse it was a salvation – the species was able to survive its’ extinction in the wild In the zoos, and those zoo animals served as the initial breeding stock for the rewilding program. Only, as BB points out, returning a formerly extinct (in the wild) animal into the wild is only the beginning, much more management lies ahead. This just might be a subtle criticism to such programs, as Colossal, who appear to do exactly that… once they get to it, of course. When that happens is another question, but BB is gearing up to be prepared already.

That said, the point that BB brings up in this week’s episode is a good one – humans are still the dominant force on the planet, many things happen on Earth with their involvement, and living space is one of them. Namely: to survive in the wild, the Przewalski’s horses need a certain ecosystem, and without human help that would be impossible. Moreover, to achieve this ecosystem, to accommodate the Przewalski’s wild horses, a certain amount of land had to be given up to them, land that could be used otherwise, by other species, including humans. In Mongolia, In case of the Przewalski’s horse, this came true. In other cases, it might not have, and as BB point out, PR and aesthetics (and national pride) were very important, if not crucial, in achieving this – and we come to the second point.

Genghis Khan. One of Earth history’s lynchpins. In this week’s historical anecdote, he, supposedly, saw some of the wild Przewalski’s horses in his day and age, but his horse was spooked by them, and did not approach them. Good for the horses! GK was one of the most formidable and ruthless leaders in human history, and his take on nature was to organize giant, organized (sorry about the repetition), hunts, that took their toll on nature, including wild horses, most likely. Yes, the scale with modern hunting is not comparable, but hunting alone does not cover all of the extinctions on this planet…

Back to Przewalski’s horses and Thylacines, another reason why the latter perished while the former did not… yes, because an Australian marsupial had a worse time surviving in old time zoos than an Asian placental mammal. However, the fact that horses have an entirely different PR than wolves (or anything wolf-related) do, also served a fact. Humans – especially those of the West, of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant (initial) origin wanted to save Przewalski’s horses, and so they did, while the Thylacine… while with the Thylacine, it was the other way, and so the Thylacine is gone, extinct, at least officially… Real life sucks, remember?

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!