Читать книгу The Majesty of the Horse: An Illustrated History - Tamsin Pickeral - Страница 15

HEIGHT

Up to 12.3 h.h.

APPEARANCE

Large head with small, intelligent ears and large, hooded eyes. Good, balanced conformation, which allows for particularly good and smooth paces. Distinctive tail that often exhibits a bushy top.

COLOR

Always bay, brown, or dun with black points, often a dorsal stripe, and mealy colored hair around the nose, eyes, under the belly, and on the inside of the flanks.

APTITUDE

Riding, light draft, jumping, dressage, competitive horse sports

IN THE SOUTHWEST CORNER OF ENGLAND bordering thirty miles of breathtaking coastline and stretching inland to incorporate forest, hills, moorland, and valleys is Exmoor National Park, home to Britain’s oldest indigenous pony, the Exmoor. This vast park, once a Royal Forest and hunting ground, is still largely undeveloped and provides great areas of relative wilderness and isolation, both factors of immense significance in the development of the Exmoor pony, and in its continuance. Despite this, the numbers of these extraordinary little ponies suffered greatly through the twentieth century, and the breed has been listed as endangered by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust in the United Kingdom since 1974.

Like the Tarpan and the Asiatic Wild Horse, the Exmoor is considered to be one of the earliest pony types to have emerged, making it one of the very few breeds that still exist virtually unchanged to the present day, and consequently of enormous scientific interest. Study of Exmoor skeletons and fossil remains indicates that the ponies originated in North America and were widespread between the latitudes of 45 and 50° north approximately one million years ago. It is conjectured that the Exmoor’s ancestor may have evolved most significantly in Alaska, possibly trapped there for many years by ice barriers, and that this extremely hostile climate contributed toward the development of its unique insulating coat, as well as its ability to withstand extreme cold and survive on minimal rations. At some point, while land bridges between continents still existed, the ponies migrated to the British Isles, which then became cut off toward the end of the Pleistocene era (c. 12,000 years ago) when sea levels rose after the end of the last ice age. During this long period of virtual isolation, the Exmoor’s characteristics and adaptability to its terrain and climate became fixed. Even when horses began to be imported from mainland Europe, they did not have a lasting effect on the diminutive Exmoor, and attempts to “improve” the Exmoor by the introduction of foreign blood have only weakened the breed’s innate hardiness.

The Exmoor is unique among pony and horse breeds in the configuration of its jawbone, which exhibits the partial development of a seventh molar, also seen in the North American fossils. The ponies exhibit further “primitive” characteristics that reflect the antiquity of their roots, most specifically in the structure and coloring of their coats, in their “ice” tails, which have short, thick, bristly hair at the top and longer hairs at the bottom, and in the heavy ridge of bone over their eye socket, which lends them a hooded look. It is the structure of their coats, however, that is so unusual and such a product of their original environment. The hair grows in two layers, with a short undercoat of woolly-type hair covered by a coat of longer, greasy hairs that are extremely water repellent. It is not unusual for them to have a number of whorls of hair at sensitive areas on the body to help direct water away. Such is the insulating level of these unique coats that snow can remain frozen on the surface of the coat while the pony remains warm and dry underneath.

In order to preserve and honor this ancient breed, the Exmoor Pony Society was formed in 1921 at the Lion Inn, Dulverton, and continues today to encourage and promote the pony and its breeding. The breed flourished in the early twentieth century and between the two world wars, but suffered enormous losses during World War II, partly due to trigger-happy troops, the loss of their owners, and the lure of their meat for food. In 1963, the first studbook was established, and a concerted effort has been made to reestablish this most important breed.