Why Asian horses don't get sick with the flu

Date:  February 7, 2019

Source:  PLOS

Avian influenza viruses infect horses in Mongolia but do not cause large outbreaks of disease because they failed to acquire key genetic changes to enable greater cross-species transmissibility, according to a study published February 7 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Pablo Murcia of the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, and colleagues. Future studies aiming at understanding those blocks to cross-species transmission using avian and equine influenza viruses will provide insight on the mechanisms and determinants that underpin influenza emergence in mammals.

Viral diseases pose a constant threat to humans and animals. Occasionally, viruses establish in new hosts, sometimes with devastating consequences. It is not clear what allows a virus to infect and become transmissible in a new population, but ecology and evolution play an important part in this process. Influenza A viruses constitute the archetypical example of emerging viruses: their main natural reservoir is in wild birds, but they have also established in humans, pigs and horses. To better understand how influenza A viruses circulate in nature and the ecological and evolutionary factors mediating viral emergence, Murcia and colleagues sequenced more than 20 avian influenza viruses collected from wild birds in Mongolia. By combining field studies, phylogenetics and experimental infections, the authors documented with unprecedented detail the stages that precede initial outbreaks during viral emergence in nature.

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Utah Landscapers Discover Remains of Ice Age Horse

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | May 7, 2018 06:34am ET

During the last ice age, a small horse about the size of a Shetland pony somehow trampled into a big lake. It's unclear how the animal died, but its body fell to the bottom of the lake, where it lay buried for about 16,000 years — that is, until this past fall, when landscapers in Utah unexpectedly unearthed the horse's remains in their backyard.

The discovery is a rare one. Horses lived in North America from about 50 million to 11,000 years ago, when they went extinct on the continent before being reintroduced by the Europeans thousands of years later, but it's uncommon to find horse remains in Utah, a state that was partly covered by the prehistoric Lake Bonneville. (This ancient lake has since dwindled, forming several smaller lakes, including the Great Salt Lake.)

It's impossible to know how the horse died, but Rick Hunter, a paleontologist at the Museum of Ancient Life, in Lehi, Utah, who is studying the horse's remains, has several ideas. Perhaps the horse made its way into the lake and then drowned while trying to escape from an ice age predator, such as a short-faced bear or saber-toothed cat, he said. Or maybe the horse died in a stream whose waters emptied into the lake. [10 Extinct Giants That Once Roamed North America]

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A horse is a horse, of course, of course -- except when it isn't

Analysis of ancient DNA reveals a previously unrecognized genus of extinct horses that once roamed North America

Date:  November 28, 2017

Source:  University of California - Santa Cruz

Summary:

Scientists have discovered a previously unrecognized genus of extinct horses that roamed North America during the last ice age. The new findings are based on an analysis of ancient DNA from fossils of the enigmatic 'New World stilt-legged horse' excavated from sites such as Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming, Gypsum Cave in Nevada, and the Klondike goldfields of Canada's Yukon Territory.

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700,000-Year-Old Horse Found in Yukon Permafrost Yields Oldest DNA Ever Decoded

Posted on November 19, 2013 • Updated February 23, 2017 —by Blake de Pastino

The frozen remains of a horse more than half a million years old have reluctantly given up their genetic secrets, providing scientists with the oldest DNA ever sequenced. 

The horse was discovered in 2003 in the ancient permafrost of Canada’s west-central Yukon Territory, not far from the Alaskan border. 

And although the animal was dated to between 560,000 and 780,000 years old, an international team of researchers was able to use a new combination of techniques to decipher its genetic code. 

Among the team’s findings is that the genus Equus — which includes all horses, donkeys, and zebras — dates back more than 4 million years, twice as long ago as scientists had previously believed. 

“When we started the project, everyone — including us, to be honest — thought it was impossible,” said Dr. Ludovic Orlando of the University of Copenhagen, who coordinated the research, in a statement to Western Digs. 

“And it was to some extent, with the methods available by then. So it’s clearly methodological advances that made this possible.” 

Orlando and his colleagues published their findings this summer in the journal Nature; he discussed them today in a lecture at The Royal Society, London. 

Previous to this, the oldest genome ever sequenced was of a 120,000-year-old polar bear — no small feat considering that the half-life of a DNA molecule is estimated to be about 521 years. 

By this reckoning, even under the best conditions, DNA could remain intact for no more than 6.8 million years. 

But Orlando’s team was able to make the most of what they had for a number of reasons, he said. 

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Reshaping the horse through millennia: Sequencing reveals genes selected by humans in domestication

Date:

December 15, 2014

Source:

Faculty of Science - University of Copenhagen

Summary:

Whole genome sequencing of modern and ancient horses unveils the genes that have been selected by humans in the process of domestication through the last 5,500 years, but also reveals the cost of this domestication. An international research group reports that a significant part of the genetic variation in modern domesticated horses could be attributed to interbreeding with the descendants of a now extinct population of wild horses. This population was distinct from the only surviving wild horse population.

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Security Cameras Capture Horse Walking Into Police Station

A horse walking into a police station sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but that scenario actually happened.The horse trotted into the Cheshire Constabulary Headquarters in Winsford, England, early Monday morning. The animal is seen on closed-circuit video casually entering the station through automatic doors before an officer walks him back out a short while later. Apparently the horse was from a nearby field, where it was returned by the staff. Police Superintendent Peter Crowcroft released this statement: "We were somewhat saddled with our unexpected guest, who in the early hours of the morning quickly became the mane event of the night shift. ... At neigh point did the horse pose a risk to security." That is probably the best example of British humor we have seen in a while.

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Horse who moved into owner’s home because of storms now refuses to leave

A woman who took in a horse during the storms could be regretting her decision after the animal decided to stay.

The steed’s owner Stephanie Arndt thought it would be safer if the horse came to stay with her during the bad weather in Holt, northern Germany.

But Nasar, three, has become so comfortable that he spends most of the time there rather than at his stables nearby.

Ms Arndt said: ‘He is not a fan of the wind and the rain.’

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Horse gaits controlled by genetic mutation spread by humans

Date: February 4, 2014

Source: Wiley

Summary: From the Faroe Pony to the Spanish Mustang, fewer animals have played such a central role in human history as the horse. New research reveals that a horse's gait, an attribute central to its importance to humans, is influenced by a genetic mutation, spread by humans across the world.

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New Species of Horse, 4.4 Million Years Old

Dec. 12, 2013 — Two teams of researchers, including a scientist from Case Western Reserve University, have announced the discovery of a new species of fossil horse from 4.4 million-year-old fossil-rich deposits in Ethiopia.

About the size of a small zebra, Eurygnathohippus woldegabrieli -- named for geologist Giday WoldeGabriel, who earned his PhD at Case Western Reserve in 1987 -- had three-toed hooves and grazed the grasslands and shrubby woods in the Afar Region, the scientists say.

They report their findings in the November issue  of Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

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Iron age horse found as Norway glacier melts

The remains of an iron age horse has been found in a glacier two thousand metres up in the mountains of Norway, one of the first times such an animal has been found at such altitude.

"It shows that they were using horses for transport in the high alpine zone, in areas where we were quite surprised to find them," Lars Pilø, the head of snow archeology at Oppland council told The Local. 

The find, which was made in August, is the latest of a string of discoveries archeologists have been making around the world, as global warming melts glaciers and ice sheets, leaving perfectly preserved relics behind. 

"Even though the finds up there are fantastic, the background to the science is very serious," Pilø said. "Norwegian climate experts tell us that all the ice in the Norwegian high mountains will be gone by the end of this century, and of course that also adds an urgency to the work that we're doing." 

Pilø, who is Danish, and his team have been concentrating their research around the Lendbreen glacier near Lillehammer, which he believes was used both for hunting and as a short cut over the mountains from the late iron-age to the early medieval period. 

"When it gets hot in the summer, the reindeer will get pestered by horseflies, and when they get horseflies they move up to the ice, which made the ice excellent hunting grounds," he explained. 

"The other reason that we have many finds is that people wold also cross the glaciers as a transport route over the mountains. You can imagine, if people went over ten times a year and dropped one thing every time, that adds up to a lot of items." 

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Ancient horse bone yields oldest DNA sequence

A fragment of a fossilised bone thought to be more than 700,000 years old has yielded the genome of an ancient relative of modern-day horses.

This predates all previous ancient DNA sequences by more than 500,000 years.

The study in the journal Nature was made possible because the bone was found preserved in Canadian permafrost following the animal's demise.

The study also suggested that the ancestor of all equines existed around four million years ago.

A remnant of the long bone of an ancient horse was recovered from the Thistle Creek site, located in the west-central Yukon Territory of Canada.

Palaeontologists estimated that the horse had last roamed the region sometime between a half to three-quarters of a million years ago.

An initial analysis of the bone showed that despite previous periods of thawing during inter-glacial warm periods, it still harboured biological materials - connective tissue and blood-clotting proteins - that are normally absent from this type of ancient material.

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Horse shot 58 times with BB gun, on the mend

RANCHO PALOS VERDES A horse that was shot 58 times with a BB gun is now on the road to recovery, after a California community came to her aid, CBS Los Angeles reported.

ASPCA officials discovered the horse, named Calamity Jane, in August. The 10-year-old mare had reportedly been neglected by her owner and was not expected to survive.

But Stacey Cohen, of Rancho Palos Verdes, rescued the animal, determined to help Calamity Jane recover.
"Something about her story just drew me," Cohen said.

Cohen found a local veterinarian who was willing to perform pro bono surgery on the animal, whose pellet wounds have yet to heal. The operation is scheduled for Tuesday.

"So many people have wanted to help her. It took all these people to come together. That's what the miracle was," Cohen said.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57526679/horse-shot-58-times-with-bb-gun-on-the-mend/

Lukas the wonder horse can count to nineteen, fetch and sit like a dog

Owner Karen Murdock adopted the failed racehorse ten years ago, a bag of bones through neglect. 

‘I’ve always loved horse-riding and I wanted to be able to jump and compete at shows,’ she said. 

(Picture: Caters)

‘From the start, I could tell Lukas was intelligent, he worked out that it was much easier to go around the jumps than go over them.’ 

She quickly realised Lukas was more interested in learning than leaping and set about training him how to obey simple commands. 

‘His attention span was amazing and I taught him to come, rear and even sit on command,’ said Mrs Murdock, 54. ‘Then using a method of repetition I began to teach him to tell the difference between different shapes and even numbers.’ 

The 19-year-old chestnut thoroughbred broke the Guinness world record for the amount of numbers correctly identified by a horse – 19. 

Mrs Murdock, who lives with husband Doug, 61, in California, said he and daughter Angela, 37, are supportive of her special relationship with Lukas. ‘I think they love the way we are such close friends,’ she said.

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/896699-lukas-the-wonder-horse-can-count-to-nineteen-fetch-and-sit-like-a-dog