Apple Valley, Minnesota – A Wild Asian Potro in danger of extinction is thriving thanks to an unlikely hero.
Marath, a Przewalski horse, fell critically ill shortly after his birth at the Minnesota Zoo almost two months ago. He survived thanks to intensive care, but his mother rejected him when he returned.
His future seemed gloomy until Alice, a domestic pony of the Americas who had recently lost his newborn, accepted him as his. The veterinarians say that this is one of the first times that this type of subrogation has been tested with Asian wild horses, and their caregivers could not be happier.
Zoo employees chose Marath’s name because it means “one that is brave”, and has had to be brave from such an early age.
Przewalski are considered the only species of truly wild horse. They were declared extinct in nature in the 1960s, with only a few survivors in zoos. But since then they have been restored in the steppes of Mongolia and China, with some in Russia and Ukraine. As today there are less than 2,000, each foal is critical for the survival of the species.
“Being one of the true wild horses that remain in the world, behaviorally, they are a bit different,” said Kurt Heizmann, director of Zoo’s Animal Care. They have never really been domesticated, and are shorter and written than family breeds, he said.
Marath was born with some extremities problems that made it difficult to stand, said Dr. Annie Rivas, director of Animal Health of the Zoo.
“And because he was struggling to keep up with mom in the flock, he spent a lot of time lying on the floor and unfortunately developed bacterial sepsis. So he was very, very sick,” Rivas said.
The Equine Intensive Care Unit of the University of Minnesota took care of its pneumonia and wounds. But it was not unusual for his mother for the first time, Nady, refused to take him back.
“That left us with, ‘What are we going to do with this colt?'” Rivas said. “We could raise it by hand, but we are not going to be the best to teach them how to be a horse, especially a wild horse.”
Fortunately, they found Alice, a gentle mare who was still afflicting her own foal, but immediately began fostering marath and allowing him to breastfeed.
“It was really a kind of perfect fairy tale ending … They just joined like this,” Rivas said.
Marath’s integration into the complex social hierarchies of a wild herd will be the next challenge, he said, but Alice is helping Marath learning to behave with other horses. They will probably remain together for a few more months. They want to join Przewalski’s herd for adults from the zoo before it is too old.
“It’s definitely a wild horse,” Rivas said. “One, he is a stallion, so he already has a great personality of that. But he is also a bit more wild than you would expect that a domestic foal is at this point of his life. And he is trying to show me that he is the boss, he is in charge, he is dominant. Therefore, he is trying to take a step forward, kick, affirm his dominance over me.”
