Horses for Hitler

© Les Willis

Deep in a primeval forest ~ Europe's last and largest surviving old-growth forest ~ lives a race of creatures with a curious past. Yes, there are bison and wild boars, beavers and badgers, black storks and eight species of woodpecker, but among them gallop the equine descendants of a Nazi experiment to bring the tarpan back from extinction. One early mention of the original tarpans was by Herodotus, in the 5th century BCE. By the end of the 1800s, they were extinct, mostly hunted for their meat. In the 1930s, German zoologist Lutz Heck and his brother took it upon themselves to resurrect the tarpan through selective breeding, and they took advantage of the war to raid Eastern European zoos for specimens with the right characteristics. These beautiful and hardy horses, though technically not tarpans, are the result: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/galloping-ghosts-174374588/?no-ist