Taipei Zoo welcomes the Lunar New Year this year through its efforts to protect an endangered species of horse native to central Asia that was once fully extinct outside of captivity.
The festival ushering in the Year of the Horse would draw attention to the zoo’s four specimens of Przewalski’s horse, named for a Russian geographer who first encountered them in the late 19th century across the steppes of western Mongolia.
“Visitors will look at the horses and think that since this is the Year of the Horse: ‘I want to get to know horses,’” said zookeeper Chen Yun-chieh, who has been responsible for care of the horses for five years.
Photo: Reuters
The Year of the Horse in the Chinese zodiac begins on Feb. 17, ushered in with celebrations in Taiwan, China, South Korea and beyond.
“The happiest thing is that, when I show up, they come right over to me,” added Chen, 34, who has a close bond with the animals and holds talks to allow zoo visitors the chance to become better acquainted with the vanishingly small population of unique horses.
Przewalski’s horse, generally brown in color and smaller and shorter than domesticated horses, had disappeared from the wild by the end of the 1960s, but some remained in captivity.
Usually considered too wild to be ridden, they were reintroduced in China, Kazakhstan and western Mongolia, where the population now numbers at least 850 across the region.
Taipei Zoo has worked with Prague Zoo, which tracks breeding efforts for the species, in a global campaign to protect the horse, supporting efforts such as helping to arrange a 2018 release of horses in Mongolia by the Czech zoo.
Chen has experience with caring for other endangered species as well, such as white rhinos and giraffes.
Many visitors might mistake the horses, also known as Mongolian wild horses, for the breed that carried the warlord Genghis Khan’s hordes on their continent-spanning campaigns, Chen said, a misconception he is happy to dispel.
“Actually, they were not,” Chen said. “Visitors can take this chance to learn that they are a different species.”
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