The Horse

by Wendy Williams

  Despite this on-again, off-again existence, Mongolian riding horses are known for their loyalty to their riders. When they’re grazing with their herd, they stay with their herd. But when the rider brings them in, they stay with the rider. Mongolian history and folktales are full of stories of such loyal horses. Loyalty between horse and rider went both ways: Warriors tied hairs from their favorite horses’ manes onto their weapons, and “the wind in the horsehair inspired the warrior’s dreams and encouraged him to pursue his own destiny,” writes Jack Weatherford in his fascinating book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. These favored horses were often honored by their riders by having blue ribbons woven into their manes.

  Genghis Khan knew very well that his success depended on horses. When Mongol warriors conquered a city, as an act of submission the armies demanded that the surrendered people pay tribute by bringing fodder for their horses. Mongolians on their hardy steeds—five for each warrior—might well have conquered all of Europe, but “where the pastures ended, the Mongols stopped,” Weatherford writes. Without grass, the equivalent of oil in our modern world, they could not go any farther.

  From the east coast of Asia on into the West, defenders could not stop the onslaught of the Mongols, but a change in the ecosystem could. Without the steppe conditions on which the Mongolians and their horses flourished, Genghis Khan’s armies could accomplish nothing. While it lasted, this horse-based empire created a Pax Mongolica. Business prospered. Mongolian administrators, aided in their communications with each other by their horses, worked hard to eliminate corruption from the vast interior of Asia. They even standardized a system of weights and measures. While the Khan’s administrators were not lenient masters—Mongolians had no trouble slaughtering whole villages of people who were not willing to submit—the mounted warriors and government officials brought a new kind of order to a once-chaotic region.

  To some Western eyes, the power and stamina of these horses who created an empire may seem surprising. Mongolian domestic horses are much smaller than Thoroughbreds, and appear to Western eyes as though they are nearly starved. Even at the end of a summer of good grazing, they have almost no fat on them. They are not glamorous. But they are strong. In a mile-long race, they don’t stand a chance against Thoroughbreds, but in a race that lasts for hours, they are winners. And in a race that goes on for days, when the horses are ridden, rested, then ridden hard, over and over again, nothing can beat them. Mongolian horses aren’t pretty, and they aren’t schooled to perform subtle movements like the levade, but they are resilient, and during the time when Mongolia ruled much of the world, they were very effective. In battle after battle during the era of Genghis Khan, these little horses of the steppe consistently outperformed the much larger horses of the West.

  * * *

  Mongolians have long believed that one of the reasons their horses are so tough is because they have Takhi blood in them. Whether this is true or not (it hasn’t been studied), this folk belief has caused some difficulties for the Takhi reintroduction. Bandi Namkhai and Piet Wit had to work hard to convince Mongolian horse owners not to sneak into Hustai and breed their domestic mares with Takhi stallions. Several times, when Piet and I drove through the park, spotting individual domestic horses grazing in the middle of a band of Takhis, Wit had to alert park staff to have the horses removed.

  This is only one of many obstacles that Hustai managers encountered. The first, surprisingly, was the task of figuring out how to acclimate the newly arrived Takhi into their Mongolian habitat, which was much larger than the pastures they’d previously lived in, and which held many new dangers. Even with the preparation of having the horses live first in semi-reserves, the survival of the Hustai Takhi was at first touch and go.

  Since the horses couldn’t simply be taken to Hustai and released, staff devised yet another interim plan. After the horses were flown from Europe to Mongolia, they traveled by truck to Hustai and were released in a fenced-in area where people could still watch them closely. At first the horses didn’t know what to eat, so staff supplied food. The horses also needed to learn what predators lived in their new territory and how to defend themselves from those predators. One newly arrived group, still in the fenced area, had to learn this quickly. Soon after their arrival, a wolf jumped the fence and attacked them. The stallion and others drove the wolf off, and there were no disasters that night. When I visited Hustai, an older staff member who had been there that night told me this story, his face glowing with pride.

  This strategy of slow release worked well, but then Hustai staff encountered yet another obstacle. When the gates in the fences were opened, staff expected the horses to leave their enclosure. However, the horses refused to go. They preferred to stay where they felt most secure. Herdsmen tried to tempt the mares by putting food just outside the gate, but the band stallion would not allow the mares to leave. Each time a mare approached the open gate and the food, the stallion drove her back inside. Nor could herdsmen get the stallion to leave. A rider on a domestic mount entered the enclosure and tried to entice the stallion to give chase. He did—up to a point. When the horse and rider galloped through the gate, the stallion stopped. Horses, even the Takhi, have comfort zones.

  Park staff were at a loss. They had expected the Takhi to embrace freedom. Finally, staff hit on a solution: they removed the fencing. This way, the horses could stay where they were and explore the park at their own pace. In the early days of this phase of reintroduction, the horses didn’t venture far. But eventually they became used to the area and began moving farther and farther away, lured, just as Whisper had been, by the promise of better grass.

  Now, after twenty years, the horses have regained their survival skills and behave much like the horses of the Pryor Mountains and McCullough Peaks. The stallions fight with each other over the mares, and the mares sometimes object to the stallions’ presumptions of power. In one case, after a young stallion won a battle with an older stallion, the usurper tried to control a group of mares by chasing a foal. The mares were having none of it. Herdsmen watched while the mares joined together and drove the upstart stallion off. Herdsmen also saw two young stallions, bachelor band buddies, team up to drive off an older stallion. The younger of the pair harassed the old stallion while the older of the pair took the mares. No fight ensued.

  Keeping the domestic horses separate from the Takhis is an ongoing problem, not just because of local herdsmen, but also because of the Takhis themselves. At the tourist camp, a string of domestic horses is kept for tourists and staff to ride. One older Takhi stallion, driven off from the other Takhi, made a habit of coming into the tourist camp at night to round up the domestic mares and run them off into the mountains.

  “Just to get himself some company,” according to the park director.

  * * *

  More Takhi have been brought to Hustai since the first release, and many of those have been able to successfully raise foals. For the most part, the horses are left alone, although herdsmen know where they are. The horses are not typically fed, but if there are special circumstances, like a particularly severe winter, staff will supply fodder.

  Hustai’s rewilding project has been so successful that it’s become a model, not just of how to return horses to the wild, but of how to return many kinds of animals to the wilderness. At the conference in Vienna where I met Jason Ransom and Laura Lagos, staff from Hustai presented information on the increase in survival rates of their horses over time. They received a standing ovation from the other conference attendees.

  The winter of 2009–2010 was particularly severe in central Asia. There had been a drought before winter set in, so forage was already limited. Following that summer drought, heavy snows fell. Whatever food was available was difficult for the Takhi to get to. In the Gobi Desert, where the ITG had placed the second population of Takhi, the population of 138 was reduced to only 49 by winter’s end. In a talk during the conference, scientists explained that mortality rates for the
Gobi horses showed clear patterns. Zoo-raised Takhi experienced greater mortality than Takhi born in the desert region. The disastrous winter weather had another important long-term effect: only one mare delivered a foal the following spring. In a scientific paper about the Gobi disaster entitled “The Danger of Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket,” the authors warned that another bad winter could completely wipe out the whole Gobi population.

  By contrast, Hustai experienced fewer mortalities. By the time of that terrible winter, Hustai had 259 horses, many of whom had been born in the wild. Only about 10 percent of the horses died. There was a reduction in the number of foals born that spring, but overall survival rates were good.

  I asked Piet Wit why he thought Hustai’s survival rates had been so impressive. He suggested that the success might have been due in part to the varied terrain in the park. There were many refugia available to the Hustai horses, whereas the Gobi horses were trying to survive in a flat, open, and somewhat uniform land that offered the horses few options. The Gobi is a much harder place for horses to survive, since, as in the Australian outback, they have to travel much longer distances to find food and water. By contrast, Hustai has mountains, valleys, some forest, and some open land, as well as a large river that flows year-round. Just like in Spain during the Pleistocene, the Hustai horses had choices.

  I also asked Bandi Namkhai, the park director, about why he thought the park had been so successful during that winter. He attributed it to the skills of local herders, who have been looking after livestock for generations. Caring for animals, Bandi suggested, is just in their blood. Herders responsible for the well-being of the Hustai Takhi keep a close watch on their charges. The horses are “wild” in a sense, but the rangers know where each horse is and what that horse is up to. In contrast, the Gobi Takhi range over a wider area and are not tracked on a daily basis.

  * * *

  After the conference, Piet Wit and I decided to get a full view of the area by ascending the sacred peak of Hustai Mountain, near the center of the park.

  Mongolia is a place where the highest mountains are home to the most powerful gods, and as we lumbered up the rocky slopes in a spine-jolting Russian-manufactured four-wheel-drive transport truck, I decided that this particular mountain must have been home to a genuinely mighty deity. The rocky ascent went on and on.

  Just before we got to the peak, we dismounted and walked, leaving our rattling gray machine to rest where, for thousands of years, Mongolians have left their horses to graze. As we walked, we saw around us a majestic world bounded by ranges of purple mountains off in the distance. We watched strange ducks nesting in the high mountains far from any water. We saw scores of red deer on high alert, monitoring our travel. Above us, steppe eagles soared, searching for prey. Somewhere out there far below us were the Takhi.

  At the top, Piet and I circled three times around a sacred Buddhist ovoo, a rock cairn bedecked with silk prayer flags of many different colors, as well as with shoes, crutches, paper money, and anything else that people have felt like leaving here.

  Standing with Piet, I looked south toward the fabled Gobi Desert and felt at my back a hint of Nettie’s easy-chair wind. This time the wind flowed down not from Canada but from Siberia, but it was all part of the same chilly Arctic Circle weather system that dominates our Northern Hemisphere and that would bring, later that day, just as it had in Wyoming, a pelting hailstorm that would cause us, once again, to break for shelter.

  Up on the mountain that day, though, breathing in the thin, clean air, I looked up at the bluest sky I’d ever seen. I saw below me a world free of fences, of paved roads, of tall buildings, or of any buildings at all, for that matter. According to Mongolian law, most of this land will never be privately owned. It belongs to the horses and to the people and is intended to stay forever open.

  I saw a mesmeric world of rolling hills that looked quite like Wyoming might once have looked. There were arid steppe grasslands dotted with stands of trees. Brush grew in the damper ravines, and wildlife trails twisted around the sides of the steep slopes. Hustai’s Tuul River valley far below us still contains precious four-thousand-year-old graves holding the remains of some of the world’s earliest horsemen—men who galloped their horses over the open plains of Asia long before the fabled rule of Genghis Khan. Change is coming to Mongolia in the form of mining and international commerce, and the horses and people will have much to contend with. But I wasn’t worried about that then, as I stood with Piet.

  After all, in Mongolia, in the summertime, when the grass is growing and the rivers are full and the sun is high—what else would you choose to be but a nomad? Chris Norris had been right to tell me: “Horses have a story to tell.” The story is one of resilience and flexibility in response to an ever-changing planet, of sociability and intelligence, and of partnership with the human race. It’s a thrilling story, one with many more layers than those peeled back by Charles Darwin, and one that no doubt has many more layers yet to be understood.

  I only wish, for the sake of his health, that poor old Charles Darwin had had a crystal ball. He would have been a much happier man.

  EPILOGUE: BACKYARD MUSTANG

  Phyllis Preator and I stood on a ridge in the McCullough Peaks horse management area, looking down into a multihued canyon that stretched as far as our eyes could see, where time was exposed with almost unfathomable complexity. In her younger days Phyllis spent a lot of time in that endless space, sometimes searching for horses, sometimes just riding, and it still thrills her. Places with too many trees make her feel closed in.

  “This place is as grand as the Grand Canyon,” I said. From my East Coast point of view, there wasn’t much grass for grazing, but there was certainly a lot of room to roam.

  “Do you think so? We do.” She was clearly pleased.

  We stood in the hunnert-degree heat for a while. For once, Nettie Kelley’s easy-chair wind had died down and there didn’t appear to be a hailstorm on the horizon. At least, not yet.

  “Phyllis,” I said, “do you think a Wyoming mustang could find happiness in a New England pasture?”

  Her face lit up.

  “Would you pay a lot of attention to him? Would you spend every day with him and find him other horses to be with and really take care of him?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I would.”

  “Then,” she said, “I think he’d be very happy there.”

  So I filled out the forms.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  How is it that Whisper became my charming companion for a short while when I was young? As I researched this book over three years, the intimate relationship between the planet’s major energy systems, like tectonics and ocean currents, became increasingly clear. Then I realized that these systems created climate shifts that profoundly altered life on the planet, in terms of both plant life and animal life. Particularly in herbivores (like the horse), evolution responded, sometimes slowly and sometimes sharply, to atmospheric composition and movement, to heat and cold, to rainfall patterns, and to new forms of plant life.

  I drew a rough draft of 66 million years of climate change (based on more scientific drawings) and placed many of the major evolutionary events discussed in this book in that context, showing how major climate events coincided with important events in the evolution of horses, humans, plant life, and ocean currents. I thought of it as an Easter egg hunt. Over the past decade or so, scientists in many different fields have ferreted out all this data, and it was immensely satisfying to see how it all fit together. I haven’t had so much fun since I galloped Whisper over Vermont’s back roads many, many decades ago.

  NOTES

  Please note that some of the links referenced in this work are no longer active.

  The page numbers for the notes that appear in the print version of this title are not in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for the relevant passages documented or discussed.

  1. Watching Wild Horses


  Wild Horses: Which horses in the world are truly wild, and which only “feral”? I began writing about “feral” horses—horses that supposedly come from domesticated stock that, some time in the historical past (as opposed to the prehistoric past), escaped human domination and began living on their own. In the view of some researchers, there are no truly “wild” horses left in the world, save for a small group of horses called the Przewalski’s or Takhi horse in Mongolia, which I discuss in greater depth in chapter 10. However, the more I learned about horses, the more certain I became that, in the case of many of the world’s bands of free-roaming horses, the details of their ancient history remain a mystery. No one knows how, or whether, domestication changed the basic nature of the horse. After I read a paper by Jonaki Bhattacharyya et al., “The ‘Wild’ or ‘Feral’ Distraction: Effects of Cultural Understandings on Management Controversy over Free-Ranging Horses (Equus ferus caballus),” Human Ecology 39, (2011), http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10745-011-9416-9, I decided to forgo the distinction and simply use the term “wild” to describe free-roaming horses worldwide. The differentiation between “feral” horses and “wild” horses implies a rigid boundary that simply doesn’t exist in many of the world’s cultures.

  “There is no doubt”: William Beebe was one of the world’s most popular naturalists in the twentieth century. The author of a myriad of books, he was one of the first to dramatize science for the general public when he narrated his descent into the depths of the ocean in a bathysphere for a radio audience. This quote was recounted to me by the paleontologist Eric Scott of the San Bernardino County Museum.