Icelandic horse and Greta Thunberg on Vogue cover

 

Greta Thunberg and an Icelandic horse named Gandalf appear on the cover of the first edition of Vogue Scandinavia.  What a perfect pairing to illustrate concern for the environment.  

Here's a link to more information about the article and additional photographs featuring Gandalf.

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/greta-thunberg-vogue-scandinavia-cover/index.html

Could there be wild Icelandics roaming the Appalachian Trail?

 A herd of 100 wild ponies (10 to 12 hands) rove about the Grayson Highlands State Park in the Appalachians of Virginia.  Local inhabitants say the ponies were released in the 1970s (some sources claim the 1940s)  to graze down the meadows.  The wild cattle who are pastured on the mountain sides are brought in during the winter, but these ponies do quite well foraging for themselves over the winter.

Certainly some of the herd look like they have some Icelandic breeding, although many look just a bit taller than a Shetland.  There is a silver dapple herd stallion that looks quite Icelandic.  And there were Icelandics in the US in the 70s, not so many in the 40s.

Use this link to check out the photos.  What do you think?  I was unable to find any genetic studies of the origins of this herd.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/more-than-100-ponies-roam-free-this-park-virginia-180959786/

Filming Icelandic Horses Swimming from Underwater

 Here's a great video of the leg action of Icelandic horses filmed by scuba divers.  It looks most of them are tolting.  I wonder if there is any efficiency to tolting while swimming or each horse has an individual preference?

 

Origin of DMRT3 the Gaited Gene--6000 years ago?

Ancient Chinese horse performing
flying pace

In 2016, a study reported that the earliest finding of DMRT3, indicating gaitedness or ability to rack or tolt, was in York, England around 850 AD.  Since that time, there have numerous articles crediting the Norse of selecting gaited horses from England and moving them to Iceland and spreading the DMRT3 gene across the Europe and then the world.

The original study did not include the many historic, genetic samples from Asia and across the world.  It did not consider the pre-850 AD written descriptions of gaited horses in Greek and cuneiform and the numerous artistic representation of horses ambling in ancient Egypt and Roman times.

Staiger et al published "The evolutionary history of the DMRT# 'Gait keeper' haplotype in 2017.  This study compared genetic sequences of DMRT3 across 26 breeds to estimate how long it would have taken for the haplotypes to change.  "We used the pattern of sequence variation int he DMRT3 region to explore the evolutionary history of the haplotypes."

"The low sequence diversity among mutant chromosomes demonstrated that they must have diverged from a common ancestral sequence within the last 10 000 years. Thus, the mutation occurred either just before domestication or more likely some time after domestication and then spread across the world as a result of selection on locomotion traits."

In other words, it is likely that the mutation for gaitedness occurred sometime after the domestication of the horse from 6000 to 10000 years ago.  

No conclusive evidence was found about the geographic origin of the gene.  "For instance, the mutation could have been spread widely via the military exploits of Alexander the Great (3rd century BC), Attila (5th century) and Ghengis Khan (13th century). Furthermore, the Romans, and their use of Greek horses, could have helped spread the mutation throughout Europe and the Middle East (Antikas 2015)."

Source:  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/age.12580