The Yakutian horse is a native horse breed from the Siberian Sakha Republic, Russian Federation. Yakutia is the coldest country in the whole Northen Hemisphere with extreme temperatures who can even reach minus 70 Celcius and the horses who live there are certainly the most resistant breed to cold. Horses are the soul of this land and their entire economy is based on them but they have only a few horse breeders left there.
One of them, admits that back in time horse breeding was a solid job, but now young people have no interest in doing this job because it takes a lot of time and is very difficult to work in those conditions. The Yakutian horse has some subtypes and below we have decided to show you them along with some of their characteristics.
1. The Northern type, which is considered the purest bred Yakut, and is often called the Middle Kolyma or Verkhoyansk horse. They have some primitive markings who includes a very dark dorsal stripe and zebra-pattern stripes on the legs. The most common color they come in is bay, grey and light dun Stallions measure 139 cm on average while mares are 137 cm. This subtype is considered to be the most valuable horse in Yakutia, who has helped the whole community there to survive.
2. The Smaller Southern type, which is also a pure breed but is considered less valuable than the Northern type. Their average height is 135 cm in stallions and 132 cm in mares.
3. The Larger Southern type, which comes as a result of cross-breeding with other breeds, and is mostly found in central Yakutia. This type measures 141 cm in stallions and 136 cm in mares.
The humans who live in Yakutia would not be able to survive without using technology like warm clothing, shelters and other kits who protect them from the freezing cold. But we can’t say with certainty the same thing about the Yakutian horses who live there along with humans. In order for them to survive in this harsh environment, they had to evolve. It is said that this breed arrived in Siberia somewhere at the beginning of the 13th century. This means that in a short period of time, these horses were able to adapt to the extreme climate and has one of the fastest evolutions known and proved in history.
Amazed by this fact an international group of scientists from the United States, Spain, Russia, France, Finland, etc. joined their forces for their genomic study by tracking the origins and the genetic basis of Yakutian horses. They come into the conclusion that the present Yakutian horses that we know today are a subgroup of domesticated horses, an extinct group that populated Yakutia in the Late Pleistocene. These horses represent one of the most unbelievably fast cases throughout history of adaption to the extreme conditions of the Arctic.
It is believed that nearly 5000 years ago the original Yakutian horse was still alive, at the same time as mammoths and rhinoceros died out, said Ludovic Orlando, Ph.D., head of Paleomix Group and curator of cryobank at the Natural History Museum of Denmark’s Centre for GeoGenetics, part of the University of Copenhagen. In about 800 years, this breed has evolved rapidly by making drastic changes who include their body size, hormones, metabolism and hair development. In the intense cold, Yakutian horses have gotten smaller, averaging about 145 cm in stallions and 136 cm in mares.
Their hair can reach about 10 cm in length during winter and they also have a long mane that can cover their neck and their shoulder. Their metabolism changes in different seasons. During fall these horses can accumulate very large fat reserves, and in spring they increase their carbohydrate metabolism by making use of the freshly sprouting grass found there. They also reduce their metabolism in the 8-month long winter but still manage to stay in their feet. This unique behavior is called ‘standing hibernation’ and the Yakutians are the only breed in the world who is able to do it.
Normally all the animals, during hibernation spend the winter in a dormant state but these horses don’t rest even for a single day. Without their ‘standing hibernation’, Yakutians horses may never have survived in this difficult environment. “It is amazing that in just 800 years, which is only about a hundred generations for horses, you can get from a regular horse, a type of Mongolian horse, to the Yakutian horses we have today,” Orlando says.