Introducing . . . the only horse breed never to be domesticated.
Przewalski horses, called the taki (“spirit”) in Mongolian—are native to Central Asia. The horses got their modern name from Nikolai Przewalski, a Russian explorer who visited Mongolia in the mid-19th century and found two herds near the Gobi Desert.
Przewalskis are small—they weigh between 450 and 750 pounds and typically stand 12 to 14 hands tall. A dark stripe, called an “eel stripe,” runs down their backs. Przewalskis also have unusually sharp hooves that they use to defend themselves and to dig up water from the rocky ground in the grassy deserts and treeless steppes of western Mongolia. And, interestingly, they they have 66 chromosomes, rather than the 64 other horse breeds have.
Przewalskis are hard to capture, but in the early 1900s, a few people caught about 100 and imported them to Europe. Only 53 survived the journey, and just 13 of those thrived in captivity. All of the nearly 1,500 Przewalskis in captivity today trace their family trees to one of those 13.