Rejected by his mother, rare Wild Asian Horse Poal finds a new mother in a domestic mourning mare

Ample Valley, Minnesota – An Asian horse foal in the process of endangered is prospering thanks to an improbable hero.

Marat, a Przewalski horse, fell seriously ill shortly after birth at the Minnesota zoo almost two months ago. He survived with intensive care, but his mother rejected him on his return.

His future looked sinister until Alice, a domestic pony of the Americas who had recently lost his newborn, accepted him as his. Veterinarians say that this is one of the first times that this kind of substitution maternity was tried with Asian wild horses, and his caregivers could not be happier.

Zoo employees chose the name of Marat because it means “he who is courageous”, and he had to be courageous with such a young age.

Przewalski are considered the only species of really wild horses remaining. They were declared extinct in nature in the 1960s, with only a few surviving in zoos. But they have since been restored on the steppes of Mongolia and China, some in Russia and Ukraine. Since less than 2,000 exist today, each foal is essential for the survival of species.

“Being one of the real wild horses in the world, behavior, they are a bit different,” said Kurt Heizmann, Director of Animal Care at the Zoo. They have never been really domesticated, and they are shorter and more struck than familiar breeds, he said.

Marat was born with members of members who made him difficult to stand, said Dr. Annie Rivas, director of animal health of the zoo.

“And because he had trouble following mom in the herd, he spent a lot of time lying on the ground and unfortunately developed a bacterial septicemia. He was therefore very, very sick,” said Rivas.

The equine intensive care unit of the University of Minnesota has treated him with his pneumonia and his injuries. But he was not unusual that his first mother, Nady, refuses to take it back.

“It left us:” What are we going to do with this foal? “” Said Rivas. “We could go up by hand, but we are not going to be the best to teach them to be a horse – especially a wild horse.”

Fortunately, they found Alice, a sweet mare who was still crying her own foal but who immediately started to feed Marat and allowed her to breastfeed.

“It was really a kind of end of the perfect fairy tale. … They just bound themselves like that,” said Rivas.

The integration of Marat into the complex social hierarchies of a wild herd will be the next challenge, she said, but Alice helps Marat to learn to behave with other horses. They will probably stay together for a few more months. They want him to join the herd of Przewalski adult zoo before he was too old.

“It is definitely a wild horse,” said Rivas. “First, it is a stallion, so he already has a great personality of this. But he is also a little wilder than you expect that a domestic foal is at this stage of his life. And he tries to show me that he is the boss, he is in charge, he is dominant. So he tries to intensify, to kick, to make his domination on me.”