Wow, what mustang's are YOU the Mom of? You may own one, but you sure know nothing about their history.

All equids originated in North America - ALL of them and nowhere else. Over the eons, they spread to the rest of the world over the various land bridges that came and went. During an extinction event during which we lost many of our unique large mammals, the horse became extinct - or nearly so - here. They were reintroduced to their homeland by the Spaniards in the 1500s, barely a blink in geological time since the last one disappeared here.

Recent studies of mitochondrial DNA have shown that Equus caballas - the horses the Spaniards brought and our "domestic" horses today - are the sam...

Wow, what mustang's are YOU the Mom of? You may own one, but you sure know nothing about their history.

All equids originated in North America - ALL of them and nowhere else. Over the eons, they spread to the rest of the world over the various land bridges that came and went. During an extinction event during which we lost many of our unique large mammals, the horse became extinct - or nearly so - here. They were reintroduced to their homeland by the Spaniards in the 1500s, barely a blink in geological time since the last one disappeared here.

Recent studies of mitochondrial DNA have shown that Equus caballas - the horses the Spaniards brought and our "domestic" horses today - are the same species as the last known horse in North America. Genetically identical. The species that the Spaniards reintroduced was the SAME one that went extinct after originating here and living here for millions of years.

They lived in the West for 500 more years, getting along just fine themselves and with the other native flora and fauna and Native Americans until the White Man came along and pretty much exterminated everything in his path. What we are dong to the wild horses now is eerily like what we did to the Native Americans.

Cattle - which originated in Asia - now outnumber the horses on the range by about 2 million to 1. Talk about invasive species!

I hope you now have a little bit more respect for your wild buzzballs.