Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jackie Cochran on August 21, 2009 at 2:24pm

The "Forest Horse" may have been non-migrating, but its ancestors migrated all the way from the Americas in the Pliocene and Pleistocene. Schafer posits several migrations of Equus from the Americal to Eurasia, with the different migrations reflecting the different adaptations of horses to the climate changes that occured back then. When America was warm, fine boned Equus came over, when it was cold the more cold adapted horses came over. Provable? I don't know, but an interesting hypothesis.

Permalink Reply by Over Fences on August 21, 2009 at 3:08pm

Absolutely the forest horses' ancestors did have to arrive in europe from somewhere, 8,000 years ago equines were all in present day North America. We find them all the time at La Brea tar pitts. When they left to different parts of the world they evolved into different subspecies as required by the demands of the landscape. My point about it being non migratory is that. Staying in one cold, wet place is what made it evolve into a squatty, hairy horse, with big feet vs. a fine light skinned desert horse. What we started domesticating 6,000 years ago was what was available in the natural world at the time for us at that point in history it was mainly the Tarpan. With later domestications of other primitive types & subsequent crosses of the different types at different times in history.

I do beleive that DNA backs up most of these theories.

Permalink Reply by Marti Langley on August 22, 2009 at 6:40am

i got my beautiful grey Pinto mare from a rescue near us. I didn't have to pay the $500 adoption fee and referral search, as the owner of the rescue gave her to me for my birthday. We just clicked immediately. Where did the grey color, and Pinto coloration come from originally? There is a mare named Zebby at the rescue. She looks very primitive, a cool olive dun color with dark zebra stripes on her legs and stripe down her back. Even her head looks somewhat primative. Why does she still look primative? Are there current breeds who have this look?

Permalink Reply by Over Fences on August 22, 2009 at 6:00pm

Hi Marti, I have to say all of my knowledge of color genetics is in the base colors (Bay,Red,Black), and The dilution genes (creme,dun,champagne,pearl). I do know some very limited tidbits about roans & greys & pintos, but I've never given them much thought.

I know all spotted horses, painted horses and roans descend from spanish stock. I'm not sure of the origins of grey horses. Andalusians are grey, and their parent breed the North African Barbs were mostly greys, and they were both very influencial in early horse breeding.

I know that the grey gene can occur on any of the three base colors, as well as on top of other patterns like roan or pinto. A palomino or a dun could even be a gray. It would be born dun or palomino and eventually turn white, leaving no clue what its original color was.

This mutation can occur in combination with pinto as well because they inherit each gene seperate . The Pinto gene restricts color to the pattern areas leaving white areas. Well when the Grey gene is added the foal is born the same way any other gray would. It's base color of RED, BAY, or BLACK, with patches of white. As the horse ages the colored areas turn whiter and whiter, but the white areas are already as white as they can ever be so the result is a gray paint or pinto. It too may someday be indistinguishable from a non-paint grey.

In response to the rescue "Zebby" I would'nt have any clue why she's a dun or why she looks primitive. Is this a mustang rescue? many mustangs exhibit primitive features. This is a combination of the spanish horsemen having preserved some of the Dun Factor colorations in their colonial era horses, and also because the mustangs have been breeding feral in the americas since 1519. So through survival of the fittest they have restored some of the wild / primitive features as the "bred-up" types would not have done so well in the wild.

Permalink Reply by Over Fences on August 22, 2009 at 5:19pm

From the Tarpan a domestic breed was created, The Caspian not thorough selective breeding but as an inevitable side effect of domestication. It was used for meat, milk & later as a draught & riding animal. During war times "Allah" instructed his followers to breed as many mounts as possible for the coming invasions of foreign territories.

The fertile crescent valley where they grew the forage necessary, could only support so many animals, and so selective breeding was born. Only the best Caspian mares & stallions made the cut.The result was the Arabian Horse Breed

Archaeological evidence suggests that it existed on the Arabian peninsula around 2,500 BC, and was first taken to Europe by the invading muslim armies in the late eighth, and ninth centuries.

It very soon thereafter influenced the local breeds.

The English Thoroughbred was a great achivement in modern breeding, and a perfect example of hybrid vigor. In the late17th & 18th centuries, when Arabian racing was fashionable worldwide amongst royalty. A group of affluent englishmen came together and founded the Thoroughbred breed. Using sturdy "native" galloway mares, and The fastest Arabians, one Turk cross, & to a less extent the best barb blood available.

All Grey Thoroughbreds are descendants of the Darley Arabian

These four types proved succesful in creating not only the best racehorse, alsothe most influencial modern breed.

Permalink Reply by Jackie Cochran on August 23, 2009 at 10:41am

Actually all TBs are descended from the Darley Arabian, but he was a chestnut. In order to have a grey you MUST have one grey parent. I think Tesio did the original research in the GSB to prove this, and if my memory is right he found that all grey TBs trace back in a direct lines of greys back to the Alcock Arabian, a grey. Unless a horse is homozygous for the grey gene, some of its get can be another color, but if the horse is homozygous (it HAS to have two grey parents,) all its get will mature out as grey. Of course not all grey horses which have two grey parents are homozygous, so without DNA analysis this is only provable over time (ie, ALL get end up grey).
If a horse is not grey, he does not carry the grey gene as it is dominant over all the other colors. Grey horses are always born colored (bay, chestnut, etc.). Tesio said he could tell if a foal was grey if there were some grey hairs on its ears at birth, but I do not know how accurate this is.
On the subject of the Darley Arabian, have you noticed how many of his truly great sire line descendents are chestnut, just like the Darley, Man O'War and Secretariat for example? I know there are great race horses of other colors (a lot of the great Arabian racehorses are grey), but I find it interesting that chestnuts are considered more fiery, reactive, etc.
Due to the physical build of the TB there MUST be more than one Turk line, especially since the sire line of the Byerly Turk has gotten less and less popular as racing has gone from multiple four mile heats to short sprints. The thoroughbred is a perfect riding horse, Turkoman frame (with its long legs and neck), Arabs--shoulders, endurance, fineness of the throat latch, and Barb--head, coloration, and maybe sprinting ability through hindend conformation.
But back to greys. ALL greys MUST have at least one grey parent.

Permalink Reply by Over Fences on August 22, 2009 at 5:37pm

The proto Arab would have to be a fourth equivalent to the other 3 types. Meaning that it is a seperate sub-species that branched from Eohippus, and ended up in the Arabian peninsula without the help of man. I agree that there were more primitive horses at the same time as Tarpan, Forest, and Przwalskii. I even sometimes write " there were 3 possibly 4 types from which our riding horses all come from", but I fundamentally disagree about there having been one naturally evolved in the correct geographical area in the correct time frame. Fossil records dont show that in the correct time frame.

Of course since domestication took place, horses have been buried near their owners homes, or in some cultures even with their owners. So fossils can be found of all kinds of horses, all over the world throughout history. If these "Proto-arab" fossils cant trace back 4 - 6,000 years, and in coresponding circumstances signaling that these were naturally occuring horses, than the author is probably speaking of feral herds of previously domesticated horses.

Also the Caspian pony would have to be denied as the ancestor to the Arabian in this proto Arab theory. We recently found the last remaining herds of Caspians and they have been Identified as the closest living descendant to the Tarpan, and the accepted ancestor of ALL hot breeds. Arab Barb Turk and all of their hot derivatives.

Do you disagree about the Caspian being the mother breed to the Arab? If DNA & Fossil records have proven something, is it still fair to choose breed based romanticism, or theory over science?

Permalink Reply by Jackie Cochran on August 23, 2009 at 11:54am

The proto-Arab probable came to the Arabian desert through horses from pharonic Egypt (high tail carraige, delicate heads, arched necks), descended from the horses of the Hyskos invaders, and maybe also the Hittite horses which swept through the Middle East, in other words we don't really know. Carl Raswan insisted that the Bedouins had tales of domesticating WILD horses in southern Arabia, though these may have been feral descendents of horses from the ancient Sabatean civilization. Who knows? Schafer has an interesting scenario, that the Arabs, as desert horses, can smell water unusually well, and as surface water disappeared in Arabia that these wild horses smelled the water that the Bedouins brought up out of the wells, and came around and asked for some water, were given water, and ended up hanging around and becoming useful. Again, totally unproveable. Our ancestors had this irritating custom of not recording all their horses' breeding, no stud books, and of not leaving extensive and detailed histories. Of course many of them could not read and write back then. But until the TB studbook there were only private studbooks, which had a distressing tendency to get burned up as the studs were stripped of their horses by the invading armies. So we must deal with less than perfect knowledge.
As far as the Caspian Pony--while this pony definitely shows hot-blood characteristics it is VERY RARE for a pureblood Arabian to be as short. Since the Caspian pony came from a better watered land than Arabia Deserta you cannot posit that better food was the reason for the greater heighth of the Asil pure Arab (ie the ones that hopefully do not have Turkoman or Barb blood.) The imports of the horses from the desert Bedouin tribes did not include 12 to 12-2 hand ponies, most were over 14 hands up to around 15 to 15-1 hands if I remember correctly. I do know of at least one pure Davenport mare (around 20 years ago) that was reportedly around 13 hands or less (I never saw her), but pure Davenports have intensive line and in breeding to only 12 to 18 ancestors starting in 1907, so intense inbreeding probably caused her shortness. Most Davenports reflect the size of their imported ancestors--14 to 15-2 hands high. (Davenport imported a lot of DB horses directly from the Bedouin tribes in 1907, and these horses combined with the 1898 World Fair importations and the Huntington importations form the foundation of the American Arab.)
Could there be Caspian pony ancestors in Arabs? Possibly. Could there be Arab ancestors in the Caspian pony? Much more likely, those Bedouin tribes never believed in international boundaries, they just went to where the rains had fallen. You must realize that unless you find fossils of the ORIGINAL Caspian horses and PROVED that their DNA (hopefully not degraded by time) contained DNA sequences that occur ONLY in the Arab horse and its proven descendents (not fairy tales,) would I grant that a short breed of horse, that breeds true as to its shortness, would suddenly add on two hands or more of average heighth, especially since the environment in the Arabian desert was so severe that of any Bedouin foal crop half of the horses died by the time they were four years old. Arab lines that are fed decently from birth do average a few inches taller than their DB ancestors, and the Arab blood obviously did not shorten the Turkoman heighth in the TB, so matter what someone claims to find from DNA analysis I do not think that they are correct in this situation.
My son is a biochemist. From what I have heard from my son about how the biochemistry is done (including DNA analysis), I definitely want every finding to be verified by SEVERAL other researchers (from different scientific institutions) before I assume that it is the complete truth. I have myself been researching Arabs for decades, including finding out everything I can about the Desert Bred ancestors of today's Arabians along with a lot of pedigree research. From my research of historic Arabs, 12 to 12-2 hand horses were rarer in the desert than hen's teeth. The Arab's heighth came from elsewhere--the proto-Arab from which the Caspian Pony is also descended, just like the super short Shetland Pony is descended from the taller Celtic Pony but is not ancestral to the other breeds descended from the Celtic Pony.
You see, scientists think up these wonderful hypotheses, and then they look for evidence. All too many of these scientists then proceed to IGNORE anything that disagrees with their beautiful hypothesis and then proceed to elevate their hypothesis to a theory before it is replicated by SEVERAL other scientists. This is human nature. Usually it takes anywhere from decades to centuries before a hypothesis is definitely proven, and DNA science is only 50 some years old, and the modern day genetic analysis is only a few decades old. These "theories" will change and modify as more work is done and techniques improve. After all, I think we share around 50% of out DNA with modern earthworms, and as far as I know we are NOT descended directly from modern day earthworms.
My apologies if it sounds that I am getting down on you. You know A LOT more than I do about the dun-grulla-etc. genetics than I do--I have not studied it, mostly because it is not an Arabian characteristic. I HAVE studied everything I could get my hands on about the Arab breed since 1965, and I have found that not all sources are reliable and that there are quite a few romantic myths running around that get corrected with later research.
Schafer based his hypotheses on his research. To quote from his introduction--"If my views appear unusual they are based on long years of anatomical study of very many wild and domestic equines, which, by aid of X-ray photography, has led to a more functional appreciation of the horse from "within" and to the habit of asking "why?"."
This is a most interesting discussion. Thank you.

Permalink Reply by Over Fences on August 23, 2009 at 12:36pm

Forgive me for my mistake about the Darley Arabian, I'm not entirely familiar with the individual names of the arabs that Ive read about. The Grey Arab is the one I meant was the ancestor of all Grey TB's. I was positive though that a single grey arab is the ancestor to all grey TB's. the name "alcock arabian" doesnt even sound familiar to me but thank you so much for educating me.

And you are correct that it takes one gray, parent to produce a grey fooal. you have a 50/50 chance of getting a grey foal and it can occur over any base color, dilution, or pattern. I't cannot hide for a generation and then show up in solid to solid breedins like some coat modifying genes do.

Permalink Reply by Jackie Cochran on August 23, 2009 at 8:49pm

I remember being at the Natural History museum in D.C., looking up at a skeleton of an Eohippus, mounted as if running at a gallop. My immediate reaction was--I wanted one for a pet! I have been interested in Eohippus since age 10, when I read the book "Horses" by George Gaylord Simpson, all about horse development over the eons. Since then I have been fascinated about how this little swamp creature developed into the grassland animal we know and love today.
I am also fascinated with their distant relatives, the many species of tapir and rhinocerus. I remember at the N.C. zoo watching a rhino manipulating something with his upper lip just like my horse liked to do. And the tapirs look so roly-poly and so unsuited to survive all these millions of years, still living like Eohippus may have. Just fascinating.
When I was a kid it was confidentally said that the horse would disappear from our country, that with tractors, cars and trucks the horse, mule and ass were no longer needed. Us crazy horsemen prevented this from happening, thank goodness. I think that it is a great pity that the quagga was exterminated, and fear that several wild ass and onager species might disappear also, as well as some zebra species. They may be untameable and horribly dispositioned animals, but I see those big eyes and long heads and something melts in my heart--they are equines.
May some form of equine survive until the end of the earth.

Permalink Reply by Over Fences on August 25, 2009 at 2:54pm

Really I never heard of the Sorrai's temperament either way. I never thought about it. I guess you cant take a Zebra & make a tractable riding animal out of it, so it stands to reason that neither could it's cousin, since it is a truly wild equine. (meaning wild not feral).

I would never put a child on a real pony other than a ponyride unless the child was an outstanding rider, and I felt the pony was sufficiently honest.

I agree that pure means pure when youre speaking of Arabs and not many other breeds. It would be entirely unethical to try to introduce any outside blood to the Arabian, but the other way around, using Arabian blood to enhance other breeds can be extremely effective, and that does not affect the purity of the Arab breed. I prefer TB blood only because they're big. Honestly I never rode an arab atleast not one I knew was one. I've overlooked them strictly on a size based bias. But I think they are distinguished and regal in every way. My favorite characteristic of the arab is it's resilience, not every horse you come across can just work on and on like an arab.

Does your flaxen gene in the arab breed occur on black base coats like in the Rocky breed?
And sabino is a pinto pattern right? is there a double form of sabino? (too much white)

I live a few properties down from "Tiffany Ranch Arabians" they specialize in creme dilute arabs. Half Arabs I guess, but you would not believe how Typey these horses are. I think they must be 3/4 or more. They come in the loveliest shades of Palomino and Buckskin, they have it dow to a science.

They produce deep dark golden palominos with flaxen manes & tails out of deep liver chestnut mares with the flaxen manes.

Very pale Palominos out of the very light red mares with no flaxen.

Smutty Buckskins that almost look like duns theyre so "smutty" These are born of the smutty bay mares.

And the most beautiful dilution in their barn is the light creamy buckskin, out of the lighthest red bay mares.