Тарпан: история, таксономия и происхождение дикой лошади.

The tarpan (Equus ferus ferus) was a free ranging horse subspecies of the Eurasian steppe from the 18th to the 20th century. The Tatars and the Cossacks distinguished the wild horse from the feral horse; the latter was called Takja or Muzin.

The tarpan was first described by Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin in 1771; he had seen the animals in 1769 in the district of Bobrov, near Voronezh. In 1784, Pieter Boddaert named the species Equus ferus, referring to Gmelin's description. Unaware of Boddaert's name, Otto Antonius published the name Equus gmelini in 1912, again referring to Gmelin's description. Since Antonius' name refers to the same description as Boddaert's it is a junior objective synonym. It is now thought that the domesticated horse, named Equus caballus by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, is descended from the tarpan; indeed, many taxonomists consider them to belong to the same species. By a strict application of the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the tarpan ought to be named E. caballus, or if considered a subspecies, E. caballus ferus. However, biologists have generally ignored the letter of the rule and used E. ferus for the tarpan to avoid confusion with the domesticated subspecies. It is debated if the small, free roaming horses seen in the Russian steppes during 18th and 19th centuries and called "tarpan" were indeed wild, never domesticated horses, hybrids of the Przewalski's horse and local domestic animals, or simply feral horses. Most studies have been based on only two preserved specimens and research to date has not positively linked the tarpan to Pleistocene or Holocene era animals. In 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature "conserved the usage of 17 specific names based on wild species, which are predated by or contemporary with those based on domestic forms", confirming E. ferus for the undomesticated wild horse. Taxonomists who consider the domestic horse a subspecies of the wild horse should use Equus ferus caballus; the name Equus caballus remains available for the domestic horse where it is considered to be a separate species.

Traditionally, two tarpan subtypes have been proposed, the forest tarpan and steppe tarpan, although there seem to be only minor differences in type. The general view is that there was only one subspecies, the tarpan, Equus ferus ferus. The dun gene, a dilution gene seen in Przewalski's horse that also creates the grullo or "blue dun" coat seen in the Konik, has not yet been studied in European wild horses. It is likely that at least some wild horses had a dun coat. During the Mesolithic, a gene coding a black coat color appeared on the Iberian peninsula. This color spread east but was less common than bay in the investigated sample and never reached Siberia. Pangaré or "mealy" coloration, a characteristic of other wild equines, might have been present in at least some European wild horses,

Wild horses have been present in Europe since the Pleistocene and ranged from southern France and Spain east to central Russia. There are cave drawings of primitive predomestication horses at Lascaux, France and in Cave of Altamira, Spain, as well as artifacts believed to show the species in southern Russia, where a horse of this type was domesticated around 3000 BC. Equus ferus had a continuous range from western Europe to Alaska; historic material suggests wild horses lived in most parts of Holocene continental Europe and the Eurasian steppe, except for parts of Scandinavia, Iceland and Ireland.

The "forest horse" or "forest tarpan" was a hypothesis of various 20th century natural scientists, including Tadeusz Vetulani, who suggested that the continuous forestation of Europe after the last ice age created forest adapted subtype of the wild horse, which he named Equus sylvestris. However, historic references do not describe any major difference between the populations, and therefore most authors assume there was only one subspecies of western Eurasian wild horse, Equus ferus ferus. Black wild horses were found in Dutch swamps, with a large skull, small eyes, and a bristly muzzle. Their mane was full, with broad hooves, and curly hair. However, it is possible that these were feral and not wild horses.]] Herodotus described light coloured wild horses in an area now part of Ukraine in the 5th century BCE. In the 12th century, Albertus Magnus stated that mouse coloured wild horses with a dark eel stripe lived in the German territory, and in Denmark, large herds were hunted.

Wild horses still were common in the east of Prussia during the 15th and early 16th centuries. During the 16th century, wild horses disappeared from most of the mainland of western Europe and became less common in eastern Europe as well. Belsazar Hacquet saw wild horses in the Polish zoo in Zamość during the Seven Years' War. According to him, those wild horses were of small body size, had a blackish brown colour, a large and thick head, short dark manes and tail hair, and a "beard". They were absolutely untameable and defended themselves harshly against predators. Kajetan Kozmian visited the population at Zamość as well and reported that they were small and strong, had robust limbs and a consistently dark mouse colour. Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin witnessed herds in Voronezh in 1768. Those horses were described as very fast and shy, fleeing at any noise, and as small, with small, pinned ears and a short frizzly mane. The tail was shorter than in domestic horses. They were typically mouse colored with a light belly and legs becoming black, although gray and white horses were mentioned as well. The coat was long and dense. The horses at Zamosc survived until 1806, when they were allegedly donated to local farmers of Poland and bred to their horses. The Konik is claimed to descend from these hybrid horses,

The oldest archaeological evidence for domesticated horses is from Kazakhstan and Ukraine between 6,000 and 5,500 YBP (years before present). The diverse mitochondrial DNA of domestic horses contrasts sharply with the very low diversity of the Y chromosome; that suggests that many mares but only a few stallions were used, and local use of wild mares or even secondary sites of domestication are likely. Therefore, the European wild horse may well have contributed to the domestic horse.

Three attempts have been made to use selective breeding to create a type of horse that resembles the tarpan phenotype, though recreating an extinct subspecies is not genetically possible with current technology. In 1936, Polish university professor Tadeusz Vetulani selected Polish farm horses that were formerly known as Panje horses (now called Konik) and that he believed resembled the historic tarpan and started a selective breeding program. Although his breeding attempt is well known, it made only a minor contribution to the modern Konik stock, which clusters genetically with other domestic horse breeds, including those as diverse as the Mongolian horse and the Thoroughbred. In the mid 1960s, Harry Hegard started a similar program in the United States using mustangs and local working ranch horses that has resulted in the Hegardt or Stroebel's horse.

While all three breeds have a primitive look that resembles the tarpan in some respects, they are not genetically tarpans and the wild, predomestic European horse remains extinct. However, this does not prevent some modern breeders from marketing horses with these features as a "tarpan". In spite of sharing primitive external features, the Konik and Hucul horses have markedly different conformation with differently proportioned body measurements, thought in part to be linked to living in different habitats. Other breeds sometimes alleged to be surviving wild horses include the Exmoor pony and the Dülmen pony. However, genetic studies do not set any of these breeds apart from other domestic horses. On the other hand, there has not yet been a study comparing domestic breeds directly with the European wild horse.