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<\/p>\nThe foal was born on April 21 and is now romping around with the rest of the herd in the zoo\u2019s seasonal Wild Asia Monorail exhibit. It belongs to a species whose members are often considered the last truly wild horses<\/p>\n
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Sarah Kuta<\/a><\/p>\n | Daily Correspondent<\/p>\n June 1, 2026 5:32 p.m.<\/p>\n After being declared extinct in the wild in the 1960s, Przewalski’s horses are slowly making a comeback. Conservationists are celebrating the birth of a rare Przewalski\u2019s\u00a0horse, often considered the last truly wild species of horse in the world.<\/p>\n The unnamed foal was born on April 21 at the Bronx Zoo, according to a May 26\u00a0statement<\/a>. The \u201cplayful youngster\u201d is now on view with the rest of the zoo\u2019s Przewalski\u2019s horses as part of the seasonal\u00a0Wild Asia Monorail<\/a>\u00a0exhibit, according to\u00a0the zoo<\/a>, which is operated by the Wildlife Conservation Society.<\/p>\n Przewalski\u2019s horses (pronounced shuh-VAL-skee) are often called the only truly wild horses alive today, though\u00a0recent research<\/a>\u00a0has challenged that designation. Genetic testing suggests they split from a common ancestor they shared with domestic horses roughly\u00a0500,000 years ago<\/a>, making the two species distant cousins.<\/p>\n Przewalski\u2019s horses looks similar to domestic horses, but they tend to be stockier and have shorter legs. Their coats are a tannish-white color known as \u201cdun,\u201d while their manes and tails sport a darker brown hue.<\/p>\n The foal is on view with the zoo’s herd of Przewalski’s horses as part of the seasonal Wild Asia Monorail<\/a> exhibit.<\/p>\n Terria Clay \u00a9WCS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u201cNature intended them to be rough-and-tumble horses,\u201d Gavin Livingston<\/a>, formerly the curator of mammals at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, told the\u00a0Chronicle of the Horse<\/a>\u2019s Patti Schofler in 2023. \u201cThey\u2019re not tall. They have big, thick legs, all muscle. They have shorter muscular necks. They are made to run and buck and kick and fight. \u2026 You see them kicking, being rough with each other, mane biting and tail pulling. That\u2019s how they speak to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n Przewalski\u2019s horses once roamed throughout Europe and Asia. But human activity, including habitat loss and hunting, pushed the horses to the brink of extinction.<\/p>\n In the late 1960s, the species was declared<\/a> extinct in the wild, with the last known population<\/a> living in southern Mongolia\u2019s Gobi Desert. However, a small number of wild-caught horses continued to survive at zoos and private parks, which organized captive breeding programs to save the species.<\/p>\n The Bronx Zoo is one of the institutions around the world working to save the species.<\/p>\n Terria Clay \u00a9WCS<\/p>\n Over the last few decades, the Przewalski\u2019s horse\u2014also called takhi, which means \u201cspirit\u201d in Mongolia\u2014has been slowly making a comeback. The global captive breeding population now stands at around 2,000 individuals<\/a>, and the creatures have been reintroduced to China, Mongolia<\/a>, the\u00a0Chernobyl exclusion zone<\/a>\u00a0in Ukraine and\u00a0Kazakhstan<\/a>. However, the species is still considered\u00a0endangered<\/a>, so every birth is a big deal.<\/p>\n All Przewalski\u2019s horses alive today descend from just 12 individuals, so conservationists remain hard at work to improve the species genetic diversity.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a major issue\u2014to make sure the population is big enough to avoid too high an instance of inbreeding,\u201d Claudia Feh<\/a>, a conservation biologist who has spent decades trying to save the Przewalski\u2019s horse, told\u00a0Smithsonian\u00a0magazine<\/a>\u2019s Paige Williams in 2016. \u201cThis is going to be a big challenge for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Did you know? Wild or feral?<\/p>\n A\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0published in 2018 suggests that Przewalski\u2019s horses are descended from a domesticated ancestor, which would make them feral, rather than truly wild.<\/p>\n Since 2018, scientists have been experimenting<\/a> with DNA from a stallion whose skin cells were frozen at the San Diego Zoo in 1980. In 2020, they announced a\u00a0clone named Kurt<\/a> had been made from the stallion\u2019s DNA. He was born via a surrogate domestic horse mother. They repeated the process to produce a second clone<\/a>, named Ollie, who was born in 2023.<\/p>\n The clones\u2019 DNA carries genetic variations that had been lost from living Przewalski\u2019s horses.\u00a0Kurt<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Ollie<\/a>\u00a0now live at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, where researchers are hopeful that they\u2019ll eventually reproduce and add some much-needed genetic diversity to the global herd.<\/p>\n Conservationists have been reintroducing the horses into the wild in recent decades.<\/p>\n Terria Clay \u00a9WCS<\/p>\n Meanwhile, biologists continue to release more Przewalski\u2019s horses into the wild. On May 25, five individuals were released into the Altyn Dala State Nature Reserve in Kazakhstan, reports Dmitry Pokidaev for the\u00a0Times of Central Asia<\/a>. Those animals include a stallion named Galvan from Prague, as well as four mares from Hortob\u00e1gy National Park in Hungary.<\/p>\n Additionally, four stallions are being transported from the Prague Zoo to Kazakhstan this week. Four mares from Berlin are expected to arrive in the country later this week under the zoo\u2019s \u201cReturn of the Wild Horses\u201d initiative.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/terria_clay_6313_przewalskis_horse_with_foal_was_bz_20260521.jpg\")
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