Is the Caspian an Endangered Species?
It has come up often in conversations where you might have heard or read someone saying the Caspian is an “endangered species.” This is a good moment to hit pause and take a look at what the Caspian is, and what it is not. Let’s start by looking at what endangered species means.
An endangered species is a type of organism that is threatened by extinction. Species become endangered for two main reasons: loss of habitat and loss of genetic variation.
This may sound like a reasonable description of Caspians, considering their habitat is very restricted and the number of individuals has been critically low worldwide. They are threatened by extinction. However, let’s dig a little deeper and look at the word, “species.”
A species is often defined as a group of organisms that can reproduce naturally with one another and create fertile offspring. However, the classification of a species can be difficult—even riddled with controversy.
And of course, the Caspian is able to do all these things, interbreed with one another and create fertile offspring. However, the Caspian can also interbreed with other horses and create fertile offspring (Caspian Partbreds). So, it’s safe to assume that because of their ability to interbreed with other horses, this would make a Caspian a member of the horse species (Equus ferus caballus), correct? But that’s where there the controversy lies, and in horses, we are never short of controversies!
Some groups do believe the Caspian is its own species. So far, however, scientists have yet to categorize any one breed of horse as its own species, despite failed attempts to reclassify different breeds and populations of horses as their own species, including the Caspian and the American Mustang. The thinking is if you can break them away from the global horse population, then you can preserve them under a protected endangered species status. Unfortunately, we are coming in at this about 5,000 to 10,000 years too late.
Since domestication, the diversity of the horse genome has dropped dramatically, and there is very little variation remaining in the Y chromosome. It is theorized that all modern horses, including the Caspian, can trace back to a population of less than 100 horses from thousands of years ago. It’s easy to conclude from there that the Caspian horse is not its own species.
Is there an endangered horse?
The Asian wild horse—also known as Przewalski's horse—is the last true wild horse, and its genome is distinctively different from that of the modern horse. With a heavy, coarse head and a dense upright mane, the Asian wild horse looks extremely hardy and primitive in comparison to modern horses. At their lowest point, these horses were extinct in the wild and had only 12 individuals remaining. A successful preservation plan and many coordinated tactics paved the way to reintroduce it back into its native habitat. Recently, a sample collected from a stallion in 1980 was used to clone a new stud colt, born in September 2020, bringing back lost genetics. It’s amazing what work goes into saving an endangered species!
While the Przewalski's horse claims the “endangered species” status of horses, the Caspian is still special and worth conserving on a private level. The Caspian horse can trace its roots back to the now-extinct Tarpan, and it is believed to be the descendant of Horse Type 4 of pre-modern horses, which is referred to as the prototype Arabian. All this makes the Caspian incredibly special, even though it is technically not an endangered species.
