NewsTracker Answers for week of June 17, 2024

Q: The world’s last truly wild horses have returned to Kazakhstan after an absence of about 200 years. Where is Kazakhstan, a large central Asian country on Russia’s southern border?

Circle the area on this map

Q: Przewalski’s horses which once roamed over Eurasia became extinct in the wild but kept alive in zoos. The seven horses sent to Kazakhstan came from zoos in Berlin and Prague, the capital of ...

A. Austria

B. Czechia

C. Hungary

D. Slovakia

B. Four mares from Berlin and a stallion and two other mares from Prague were flown to Kazakhstan on a Czech air force transport plane. In the 1990s, the wild breed of horses was reintroduced into Mongolia.

Q: The vast grasslands where the horses originated are called ...

A. Eurasian Steppe

B. Kazakh Savanna

C. Mongolian Plain

D. Russian Shrubland

A. The Eurasian Steppe stretches through Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, southern Russia, Kazakhstan, Xinjiang, Mongolia and Manchuria. The geographic term steppe describes grassland plains without closed forests except near rivers and lakes.

Q: Modern domestic horses are related to the wild Przewalski’s horses, but neither is an ancestor of the other. The earliest evidence for the domestication of horses has been found in Kazakhstan and what other country in the Eurasian Steppe?

A. Manchuria

B. Mongolia

C. Russia

D. Ukraine

D. Horses were domesticated about 5,500 years ago. There is evidence that domesticated horses had spread throughout Europe and Asia by about 4,000 years ago,

Q: Przewalski’s horses were never domesticated, so they are considered the last true wild horses. Other “wild” herds like America’s Mustangs descend from domesticated horses that became feral, or free roaming. Which country has the largest population of feral horses?

A. Australia

B. Brazil

C. Canada

D. United States

A. Australia has about 400,000 Brumbys, the feral descendants of horses brought to Australia by English settlers. Feral horse herds can be found on every continent except Antarctica.