Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarpan

Tarpan (Equus ferus ferus, also known as Eurasian wild horse) is an extinct subspecies of wild horse. The last individual of this subspecies died in captivity in Russia in 1909. Beginning in the 1930s, several attempts have been made to re-create the tarpan through selective breeding.

The name "tarpan" or "tarpani" is from a Turkic language (Kyrgyz or Kazakh) name meaning "wild horse". Tatars and Cossacks distinguished the wild horse from the feral horse; the latter was called Takja or Muzin.

History

The Tarpan is a prehistoric wild horse type that ranged from Southern France and Spain east to central Russia. There are cave drawings of what are believed to be Tarpans in France and Spain, as well as artifacts believed to show the species in southern Russia, where Scythian nomads domesticated a horse of this type around 3000 BC.

The Tarpan horse died out in the wild between 1875 and 1890, when the last known wild mare was accidentally killed during an attempt at capture. The last captive Tarpan died in 1909 in a Russian zoo. An attempt was made by the Polish government to save the Tarpan type by establishing a preserve for animals descended from the Tarpan in a forested area in Bialowieza. These descendents are today sometimes referred to as the Polish primitive horse.

Recreation of type

Three attempts have been made to re-create the Tarpan. In the early 1930s, Berlin Zoo Director Lutz Heck and Heinz Heck of the Munich Zoo began a program that by the 1960s produced the Heck horse. In 1936, Polish university professor Tadeusz Vetulani began a program using Konik horses, and in the mid-1960s Harry Hegard started a program in the United States using feral mustangs and local working ranch horses that has resulted in the Hegardt or Stroebel's Horse. None of the breeding programs were completely successful, although all three resulted in horses with many similarities to the Tarpan.

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