Domestic and feral horse

While the domestic horse is well beyond the scope of this website, it is relatively little changed, and there are feral horse populations in a lot of places around the world

  • The gray horses of the Camargue, the marshy Rhone River delta in southern France. Descended from Arab horses that ran wild during the Roman occupation of Gaul, these horses have developed hard, flat hooves that spread their weight across the swampy ground.
  • Herds of dark-brown horses in Sweden’s mixed tundra and forest are feral.
  • Iceland is home to populations of feral ponies.
  • Nine breeds of semi-wild ponies that live in the British Isles. Among the best known are England’s New Forest and Exmoor ponies.
  • The “wild” horses of Assateague, a barrier island off the mid-Atlantic United States.
  • Australia is thought to have around 400,000 feral horses, alongside as many as 5 million feral donkeys
In some places feral horses do significant damage, while elsewhere they probably replace extinct species that behaved in similar ways. Domestic horses are beyond the scope of this website.
See Animals Wild
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